Disassembled
by thefireplanet
Summary: In which Loki is in over his head, the Avengers can't find any traction, Midgard falls to war, and to save the world the God of Mischief and Lies must, well—conquer it.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n:**** STOP! Before you read any further this is a sequel to _Loki_. **if you want to, go read that one first. if you have, thank you! if you don't care, that's ok, too.

my biggest fear with this one is that it's going to be a re-telling of the movie, plus Jane. I DON'T WANT THAT. NO! the movie was amazing; i'm trying to make this different. this is my: what if Loki did everything he did out of the kindness of his heart version. aka the maybe he isn't so bad after all version. aka in my hopes and dreams version.

so please, tell me what you guys think. tell me if i'm out of my mind. i might just fade back into the workings of the internet and you'll have to forget you ever found this.

if you guys are interested in hearing more of this story, please review :)

* * *

"You say you know Midgard better than any other. What proof have you of this?"

"Nothing but the word of a prince. That will not do?"

"Prince? _Prince_! Ha! You are banished. Fallen. The title of your old home no longer applies to you."

"Yes, well, we will have to remedy that, won't we?"

"Watch your tone, Asgardian."

"You seem unwilling to trust me. I wonder: why is that?"

"I _wonder_ why you should be so callous, so impetuous, in _his_ presence: he, the one that gave you shelter when you had none; he, the one who took you in when you had fallen; he—"

"He, who needs my help now."

"How _dare_ you—"

"The Tesseract is on Earth. I have named my price. Can you accept it?"

"We must needs have more proof—"

"Of what? I have walked among the humans. I know their weaknesses. I know their ways. Give me an army to lead in glorious battle, and you will have the Tesseract."

"Our force, our Chitauri, is ready to command. But what of the Earth?"

"Such curiosity as to their fate seems beneath you."

"_He_ wishes to know. To test your…conviction. What of the humans?"

"What can they do, but burn?"

* * *

He keeps the dim, distant hope that this could have all been some far-flung training exercise dreamt up by the Security Council (and surprise! You all passed, congratulations!) until the copter pulls into S.H.I.E.L.D airspace, blades whipping and cracking as it lands, several feet in front of him. The door slams open.

"How bad is it?" Fury is the first out, shouting over the _chop-chop-chop_ of the helicopter's blades as they slow to a dull throb. Coulson nods once to Hill as she follows, barely perturbed by the wind, her face set in that unreadable mask that she thought she had perfected. (Coulson didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't so much unreadable as it was perpetually pissed off.)

He's just stalling, now. Better to get the news over with. He takes a deep breath. "That's the problem, sir!" He keeps his hands clenched in front of him, fights the urge to rub his eye, raises his voice over the disturbance of the copter. He begins to walk forward, behind the heavy march of the Director as they enter the research building. The main lobby is clogged with men in lab coats and suit jackets and jumpsuits, racing to pile briefcases on trolleys, to get them loaded up and gone. Inside is quieter, without the wind-whip of the helicopter. A controlled sort of chaos. He pitches his voice down a level. "We don't know."

Fury stops, so quickly Coulson almost runs into his back (as it is, he has to sidestep into Maria's upper arm), and gives him a look through his one good eye that could freeze water. "Excuse me?"

He forges bravely ahead, walking past Fury and Hill towards the stairwell leading to the lower levels of R&D. "About four hours ago we experienced a—disturbance in the Tesseract's readings."

"Selvig and Foster haven't been authorized to proceed to testing phase." Fury sounds like he wants to kill someone. Namely Jane. Coulson decides it's best to try and defuse the situation.

"No one authorized anything, sir, that's the thing—it went off by itself." He pounds down a few more steps. "We ordered it to be shut off; when that didn't work, we went straight into evac."

"That's impossible." Hill frowns as he reaches the door at the bottom of the stairwell and proceeds to punch in the code to open the double-fortified steel plates. "How could the Tesseract not turn off?"

He doesn't have an answer, because that's Selvig and Jane's area of expertise, so he doesn't offer one. Instead he throws open the door, nearly stepping into a small lab technician struggling with three clear boxes of plastic vials labeled: GAMMA TEST PHASE 5 FRAGILE.

"Careful with those." He feels the need to point out as she shuffles past.

"How long till this place is cleared out?" Fury snaps.

"This is the last of it, sir. We can be out in half-an-hour."

"Do better."

"Yes, sir." He thinks he should have taken Stark up on those teleporters he had assured S.H.I.E.L.D he could build. ("_Then you can say, Beam me up, Scottie. How cool would that be_?")

"Sir, with all due respect—" Hill looks at the bedlam, and Coulson winces as another lab tech trips over an exposed pipe, sending several boxes of unknown origin scattering across the ground, "—evacuation may be futile."

Fury frowns as the mess is cleared. "We should tell them to go back to sleep?"

"If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, there may not be a minimal safe distance."

The thought makes Coulson want to blanch, but, unlike Hill, he has perfected his "no-emotion" face.

"I need you to make sure the Phase 2 prototypes are shipped out." Fury doesn't bother to address the validity of Hill's concerns.

"Sir, is that really a priority right now—"

"Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on. Clear out the tech below. I want every piece of Phase 2 on a truck and gone."

"Yes, sir." Hill brushes past the Director with nonchalance, anger visible in every line of her body. He thinks that Fury, for a moment, is going to explode, but instead the Director turns his one eye towards him and barks, "Get to work, Agent."

"Yes, sir."

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

"Talk to me, Doctor."

Jane wants to politely point out to Director Fury that _she_, not Erik, is the one currently holding the Geiger Counter to the Cube, and therefore _she_, not Erik, should be the one to "talk to him." She pulls a long, pointed needle from her pocket and probes the Cube with unnecessary force, wincing as energy arcs up and around, fast and hot. She huffs, stepping backwards. The holder she and Erik had built for it a couple of weeks ago (based off Stark's arc reactor designs, but if she told the billionaire that he'd make her pay copyright fees) hums with life. The needle falls to her side as she examines the Tesseract, the myriad of blues—light, dark, middle, even white—and Erik answers.

"The Tesseract is misbehaving." She can hear him fiddling around at the workstations behind her. "Isn't that wonderful?"

Jane turns slowly, feeling oddly vulnerable with the Cube at her back, frowning at the giddiness of Erik's voice. He's smiling widely, too widely, especially for someone who could potentially get buried alive if they didn't get this energy spike under control.

She runs a hand through her hair, turning back around, tapping the Geiger Counter against her leg. She looks up, to the catwalks above their workspace. Barton is crouched there, a dark, ever-present shadow. Jane wonders if he can sense it, too; if he thinks something is a little…off. With Erik.

Or maybe she's just becoming paranoid.

Who knew, at this point?

"I hardly think this can be classified as _wonderful_, Doctor." Fury deadpans. "I need you to control the spike."

"We can't!" Erik laughs. Jane, halfway in the middle of trying to get another preliminary reading on the softly glowing cube in front of her, nearly tips sideways at the sound.

"Erik!" She turns, rather violently, offended and embarrassed all at once by his tone, by the easy expression on his face, by the way he looks gleeful, anticipatory, because what the _hell_ could he possibly be looking forward to except an early grave? Her squawk of outrage garnered the attention of Director Fury. For the first time, he seems to notice her. His mouth turns down in a deeper frown.

"Ah. Ms. Foster. Had enough _time_ to figure things out, I presume?"

She ignores the jab, stepping back and towards the worktables. "Maybe you should sit down, Erik." She directs him towards a chair, puts the Geiger Counter down next to him, and rounds quickly on Fury. Through her teeth:

"We've never had any precedent to this. We don't know how to stop it, because we don't know how it _works_." She hates admitting defeat. Erik lets out another bark of laughter.

She motions Fury to follow her towards the Cube, mostly to get out of her friend's earshot. "If we try and turn it off, it just turns itself back on." She pauses. "It _is_ an energy source, after all."

"Where's Barton?" Fury looks down his nose at her. "Forgive me, Ms. Foster, for wanting a second opinion."

Jane tries to smile, but the edges are sharp. "The hawk? He's up in his nest."

Fury makes a sharp motion; Barton clatters to his feet, still silent as the grave, even as he drops a zip-line to the floor. His boots make the only sound as he walks quickly over to where they stand.

She likes Barton, likes his steadiness and the way he isn't a complete and total asshole like some (coughone-eyedcough) people she knows.

"Anything unusual?" Fury mutters, as soon as Barton's within range. Jane crosses her arms, looking at Clint's serious eyes with an almost dare—_tell him I'm wrong_—but he only shakes his head.

"Nothing Jane couldn't have told you."

She smiles again, less sharp, more friendly.

"Look, Selvig didn't do anything to turn the Cube on." Barton stands next to the Director, until they are all three in a strait line before the Tesseract. "Though he does seem to be getting more…excitable, the more it acts up."

"Suspicious behavior?" Fury sends a glance over his shoulder.

Barton shrugs. They are all silent, for a moment, lit blue by the light of the Cube. "It turned on by itself, yeah?" He says at last. Jane nods slowly, up, down, up, down. He looks sideways. "So, it seems to me like someone is knocking."

"Oh." Jane's breath leaves her in a little _whoosh_ just as Fury inhales sharply, "Excuse me?"

"This thing's supposed to be a door to the other end of space, right?" Barton looks to Jane for approval and she nods, so he gestures vaguely at the object in question before re-crossing his arms, tightly.

"So someone is tampering with the entrance on the other side. Knocking. Reverse engineering the Tesseract's energy signature, enough to briefly hook onto its pattern and slingshot through a small portal—" Jane takes a step forward, head tilted.

"English, Ms. Foster."

"What she means is," Barton looks towards the Director, "doors open from both sides."

She's slightly distracted by the possibilities of this. A door opening from the other end of space—similar in theory to an Einstein-Rosen Bridge—so was it—could it—she opens her mouth to say something, but doesn't know what. Barton and Fury are trying to figure out how to move the thing. Erik is still chuckling, eyes wide. Lab techs and security guards are trying to take out what isn't needed, running tests, and _why is the light getting stronger_—

"Move!" She screeches, too late, because she's flung backwards onto the two figures behind her, so they all fall in an ungraceful sprawl to the floor, pushed by a blast of energy, and the Cube lets out a single stream of wispy, sky-blue light barreling in a thin strand towards the far end of the research center, where they had attempted to build some sort of platform for a potential portal—

She feels the energy snapping and cracking across the room. Machines switch off; somewhere in the distance, alarms are waling. She gets to her knees, pushing away from Barton, brushing off his attempts to keep her still. The blue light splatters, like paint, into a soft, circular form, and for a moment she can see the stars, nebulae, galaxies, and her breath leaves her, because this could be the answer to _everything_—

Then it's gone. The plain, blue light replaces it, swirling and breaking and whisping. It takes her a moment to realize that it's coalescing, like some tangible substance, around a figure, kneeling. She gets to her feet, pushing her hair away from her face. Barton and Fury follow her.

Everything stops. The power surge left the lights dim; the backups are a poor substitution. She squints through the darkness towards the platform and suddenly her heart is around her knees—

The figure raises its head.

Green, green eyes.

She can't quite breathe.

He stands, slowly, a wicked, wide grin on his face. He looks gaunter, paler; hair longer; eyes darker. In one hand, held loosely, is some sort of weapon. His grin becomes more manic as he looks around.

No.

No way.

"Sir, put down the spear." Fury shouts in the now-silence, voice echoing across the domed ceiling. The figure doesn't listen. He's at his full height now, surveying the room, the four soldiers approaching him, guns raised, the man in the black trench-coat—

But he doesn't see her.

"Sir, put down the spear." Fury repeats, but the figure still doesn't listen, and when did he ever listen, anyway—

Jane takes an involuntary step forward but then Hawkeye's hand is on her wrist, holding her back, his voice in her ear, "No, Jane," so she stops, but still—

Chapped lips, long hair, green eyes, dark, dark, dark—

"I am Loki, of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."


	2. Chapter 2

**a/n:** as always, this is a sequel to _Loki_.

everyone, thank you so much for the support! the reviews, the faves, the alerts-seriously, each one has made my day. thank you, thank you, thank you!-and i'm sorry i can't respond to each review. school year is winding down. (which means final projects. yay. -dies-)

**note**: i wrote an epilogue for _Loki_. some of those events, in light of the movie, had to be changed for this.

please read and review :)

* * *

"We have no quarrel with your people."

The effects of the transport are wearing off, his world becoming clearer around the edges. He'd forgotten (how long had it been? Four months? Five? A year?) how sharp his senses became on Midgard. He could see the crack in the floor twenty-feet away, the exposed wires three more; he could smell the fear radiating off the mortals in thick, cloying waves. The man, who dared to address him in such a casual manner (as if, by some small chance, a human was on equal footing with a god) folds his arms across his chest. Loki looks at the scars surrounding a plain, black eye-patch—

(_"You follow your brother into unnecessary battle, yet you are the one who pushes him into that battle! You need learn control, Loki Odinson, and until the moment which you do, until the moment which your selfish actions become unselfish, I take from you your power! In the name of my father, and of his father before him, I cast you out!"_)

—and resists the urge to spit. That is something that Tho—

He stops.

The dark man is looking at him expectantly. He takes a moment to respond, calculating, watching the slow advance of four mortals, firearms raised in what he suspected was meant to be an intimidating manner. (Threat level: low.) He sweeps the room: scientists, workers, laymen. (Threat level: low.) Two figures obscured by the crude, unsightly apparatus crafted to house the Tesseract. (Threat level: low.) He arches one eyebrow wryly, turns his gaze back upon their leader (threat level: low), and says with a slight, sympathetic shake of his head, "An ant has no quarrel with a boot."

The Tesseract sparks warmly as he takes another step towards it. He can hear it, whining against its restraints, wanting to explode in a flurry of rage and energy, enough to rip the planet apart. "Pathetic." He shakes a head at its cage, the wires and metal and instruments. "An attempt to control the uncontrollable. How very _mortal_."

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. At last:

"I'm Director Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D. And you—you look an awful lot like that guy from Agent Coulson's briefs on the New Mexico incident. Last I heard, you left without any intended...hostilities. Towards Earth." The dark man is choking on his words and Loki grins at it, the forced attempt at diplomacy which those on Midgard always botched, anyway, showing up at their neighbor's door armed to the teeth, speaking of a truce but secretly hoping for a battle, much like his bro—

"Tch." He rolls his fingers along the scepter in his hand. "How quaint a notion. How naive." One more step. Look how the mortals squirm. "I bring glad tidings. Of a world made free. Of _peace_."

"That's funny." Fury's hand is moving to the weapon at his thigh. "You say that, I kinda think you mean the other thing."

"Do I?" Loki grins, teeth and sharp and manic and he knows and he _likes it_. "Do I really?"

"Put down the spear."

The room flickers dark. "I think I'll keep it, if it's all the same to you."

"Shoot him." Fury's voice is the crack of a whip across the domed, blackened room. Clicks: one-two-three-four—and then the shooting starts, mingled with the screams of the mortals running for cover as bullets ricochet off metal and brick and wall and floor. They pepper him like gnats, bouncing off his dwarven-crafted armor and clattering to the ground, powerless, bouncing, broken, _plinkplinkplink_.

He stares, something tickling at the back of his mind. The spear in his hand is heavy, the cosmic energy, placed by _him _at its head, mimicking the beat of his heart. He doesn't like it. He stares at it, and doesn't like it, doesn't like the feel of this magic. Ancient. Old. It makes him sick. In the back of his mind he can see the universe stretched out beyond the Nine Realms, far reaches of space teeming with riches and waiting to be discovered, conquered, ruled, and should he not rule, after all these years as second, all these years in shadow, should he not _rule_ and watch the mortals tremble and cower in _fear_—

He blinks. His own magic, liquid white-green, bats away at the intruder, but feebly; the other colors his world a spectrum of blues and waits to eat away at his mind.

It is so hard, to remember his purpose, with the sweet, soft whispers of the ancient magic in one ear, with the ugly, painful ones of _him_ in the other, watching his every move.

Purpose. What purpose? What more is there than death, dying, mayhem? His heart beats:

_Kill, kill, kill_.

What purpose?

Oh, yes.

To put on a show.

He hefts the spear in his left hand and blasts it forward. The energy that follows is quick, sharp, slamming the first attacker in the chest and knocking him back until his head hits the concrete with a sickening crack and he falls to the floor, neck broken.

Loki laughs.

He twirls on the next, jumps high and long, so that the tip of his weapon collides with the feeble chest-guard of the mortal and penetrates, smoothly, cleanly, between the upper part of the rib cage and the heart. He imagines vessels bursting, weak organs struggling for life at the onslaught of an overwhelming river of blood—

He turns, trying to regain a handhold on reality. (_kill_plan_kill_plan_kill_) His own magic flashes hot, and two of his knives are plucked from limbo and flung at the next guard. Neck. Shoulder. The man is down.

Oh, what a good show he is putting on for _him_—

He stabs the last guard without even looking. There is no need. Weak, pathetic creatures, all of them, all of them dead, dead, dead—

His spear pulsates, brightly.

He turns on the rest.

The room is large and badly lit, but he can see, see the humans in white scrambling like animals around the back, still trying in vain to collect equipment that will do them more harm than good. He sends two well placed bolts of energy—one slams into several workstations with a small explosion. The other disintegrates a man unlucky enough to be in its way.

He's vaguely away of more bullets, of screams and yells. Vaguely. The world is a fuzzy blur, except for the pounding of a deep, rattling voice:

_Kill, kill, kill_.

He turns in time to evade the jab of a man with a hard face and serious eyes, who appears slightly more competent than the rest of the mortals. (Still just a dog.) He readjusts his grip on the spear as the man swings around, regaining his balance and sweeping a leg out, all in one fluid motion. (A trained dog, then.) Loki dodges, easily, grabs the next punch and twists, almost, but not quite, breaking his wrist. The man grimaces in pain but still dares to meet his gaze.

"You have heart." Loki looks into the man's steady eyes, recognition flickering dully there, pushes the point of his spear towards his chest, and is focused, so focused on trying to pull a small strand of magic through his arm that he fails, entirely, to notice the figure approaching behind him until the hand is touching his shoulder—

_Kill, kill, kill!_—

He twists, sending the blade arcing up and out and stopping it a hair's breadth from—

Plain, dull hair.

Wide, brown eyes.

Familiar eyes.

Mouse eyes.

His mouth goes dry. He nearly drops the spear but remembers, at the last second, that he has to keep up appearances. The blade hangs in the air between them. He blinks, rapidly. His vision is suddenly clear. The world is not so blue, not so red; the pounding in his head has stopped.

"Loki." Jane Foster says, very clearly, pronouncing his name as two syllables, like she is testing a foreign word. Then, batting the scepter to one side:

"What. The. _Hell_. Are. You. Doing."

He considers this for a moment. "A fair question."

She looks at him, expectantly. There is screaming, still, a small fire he started, the bodies of the four-five-six men he killed prone on the ground, and all of it piled between them, but his world is suddenly clear and the pounding has stopped and the power in his spear has dimmed to a faint, twisted dream.

There is nothing he can tell her.

Can tell anyone.

He frowns. "You should not be here."

"Are you—have you—have you lost your _mind_?" She reaches one hand forward, towards him, catches herself, and crosses her arms tightly across her chest. Her hair is falling across her eyes. They are bright. "Stop this!" For a second, he thinks she is going to ask w_hat's wrong,_ but instead: "Or I'll make you."

He's glad she didn't. Didn't ask. Don't ask.

_Stay away._

He arches one eyebrow thinly at her, smiling humorlessly. "Still as idiotic as ever, I see."

"Jane?" The voice is unfamiliar, coming from behind him. He deigns a small glance over his shoulder at the man with the solid gaze and finds a mortal firearm aimed at his face. "Do you know this guy?"

A pause, as she considers her answer. Then, coldly: "He looks like someone I thought I knew."

He still smiles. Emotions were never part of the plan. He has a plan and he remembers it now and emotions were never—could never—be a part of it.

(_"Will you be back?"_

"_Perhaps."_)

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to put down your weapon."

"You are not wise to order me about, mortal." He makes the smallest gesture of his right hand. Cool, liquid magic snaps once, twice, and the gun pointed at his head falls to the floor in several pieces. Loki turns to face him. "Unless you wish to test the meager might of yours against a god?"

"I wouldn't mind testing my mettle." The man shrugs, then slams forward. Kick up, side—Loki sidesteps once, twice, brings around his weapon, and decides mid-swing that this man is more trouble than he's worth, so he might as well just kill him—

"_Loki_!" Jane rams him from the side. He barely moves from the impact, laughs darkly at the thought that it probably hurt her more than him, but the jolt of it is still enough, just enough, so that the wicked blade only skims the man's cheek as he slides beneath it and comes up the other side, like it was part of his plan, after all, to miss.

Loki wishes he could have added this mortal to his collection of allies. Hela knew that list was short.

The man grabs Jane by the wrists and spins her around, out of reach. Something tightens in his chest.

_Kill, kill, kill!_—

_No, no, no_—

"Barton! Get Foster and Selvig out of here _now_!" Fury is straightening. Loki watches the silver briefcase at his feet close with a snap, cutting off the pure blue light of the Tesseract.

"But sir—"

"That's an order, Agent."

"Jane, come on—"

"Wait, if I can just—"

"Sir!" A new voice. Fury jerks at the sound, the title, but Erik Selvig is running towards Loki out of the shadows, eyes faded and cloudy with the drug of old magic.

An old ally. Important, nonetheless.

He takes three long strides, holding out the spear—Jane screams in protest, the sound loud and grating against his ears—and touches it, lightly, to Selvig's chest. "Freedom is life's great lie, is it not? Once you accept that," the mortal blinks and Loki watches the ancient magic slither up his neck and settle like a storm around his eyes, "you will know peace."

"Barton, get Foster _out_!" Fury roars.

"No! No, you can't—Erik! _Erik_! Loki, what did you—_Loki_!"

He turns his eyes, watching as the man—Barton—wraps an arm around her waist, hoists her, like a child's toy, over one shoulder, and moves from the room, into the shadows and away, away, away—

_Kill, kill, kill_—

He is so tired.

"I figure she's gotta be important." Fury is still standing protectively by the briefcase, watching him watch Jane, but Loki knows the man will find no hint of anything on his face. "World's leading astrophysicist, and all."

"Sir." Loki looks sideways. Selvig is at his elbow. "Director Fury is stalling. I've read the energy signatures, and that—" he points to the swirling, unstable mass of blue energy gathering at the top of the domed room, the after image of his journey here—"is going to blow in minutes. He means to bury us."

"Ah." Loki looks with an almost smile.

How clever.

"Like the pharaohs of old." Fury meets his eyes with a cocky grin.

(_"I have no plans to die today."_

"_None do."_)

Loki stares at the blue mass, trying to erase the sight of Jane beating her fists against Agent Barton's back as he hoisted her from the room, eyes ablaze with indignation, anger, something else—

His head is cleared, like it has not been in weeks, like it has not been since he fell down, down, down, deep into the Nether Realms and met _him_ and learned of _his_ plans. The old magic of the scepter is a distant star in his mind's inner eye. He roves over the destruction, the broken equipment, the prone figures, lit a sickly blue by the growing energy surge above them. Director Fury has not moved.

Director Fury.

The man could prove to be more useful than Agent Barton ever could have hoped to be. The man could serve Loki's purposes well.

His plan is set, then.

"I am…sorry." He says slowly, meeting Fury's good eye. His insincerity is palpable.

"For what? Killing my men? Slaughtering innocent people? Threatening my best agent and my pain in the ass researcher?"

"Sir!" Selvig warns.

"No." Lies, so many lies, and wasn't that in the past, isn't that what he learned in this stupid realm the first time—"For this." He springs, lithely, gracefully, swings his spear and—

And touches it to Director Fury's chest.


	3. Chapter 3

**a/n:** this is a sequel to _Loki_. you should go read it.

hi guys! i'm so sorry this took so long. i had finals. blah. also this chapter was a pain to write. but! thank you for all the alerts and favorites and reviews! i love every one, and i'm sorry i can't respond to each personally. please keep reviewing because i love them. yes. also, major divergence from movie up ahead in the next few chapters. so...yay?

please read and review :)

* * *

"Do you hear that?"

Jane sucks in a breath through her teeth, trying to ignore the way her abdomen is aching from being fireman carried for who-knows-how long. They've stopped in a dimly lit corridor, but she's too busy staring at Clint's ass (he has a nice ass, but she's not Darcy, so she keeps her mouth shut) and trying not to pass out from all the blood rushing to her head to notice where. The concrete beneath them is worn to a light gray. The metal pipes, mounted on the walls and ceiling, making the hall small, claustrophobic, are chipped and peeling.

(She only notices these things to keep her mind off of—)

"Hear what? And damn it, Clint, put me down."

"Last time I put you down, you bolted for the lab."

Yes, the lab, to maybe talk some sense into a certain asshole, but then he had thrown two strong arms around her waist and tossed her like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder, running so that her fists on his back missed the mark as she bobbed (up-down-up-down).

"Yeah, well, I'm thoroughly lost now, so I don't think that's an option." Part of her thinks this all happening too fast and what the actual hell.

Part of her thought he'd been dead.

(But he was too clever for that, wasn't he?)

Clint puts her down much more gently than he picked her up. For a moment her world spins. She pushes her hair back from her face and tries not to vomit as the pounding beat in her head ebbs and she looks around the corridor. Blank. Empty. She spies a door at the far end. The lights are flickering. She bites her lip absentmindedly as his serious eyes find hers; he looks like he's about to ask an unthinkable, unspeakable question (_what happened who was he etc., etc._), so she heads him off, readjusting her coat. "Do you sweep every girl you meet off her feet?" Her laugh is tried and sad.

"I never said chivalry was dead." He cocks a small, half-grin, fiddling with the pistol strapped to his thigh. Jane watches as his fingers dance around the safety. He opens his mouth, again, slowly meeting her eyes, and she steels herself, but instead—"So, do you hear it?"

She exhales, loudly. "No." Something in Clint's eyes says that her interrogation will come later, when they are out of this mess, but right now he only has his head canted thoughtfully to one side. "No. I don't hear anything."

"Exactly."

She frowns. Silence. Only her breathing, echoing in the dim light of the hall. Barton is, for lack of a better cliché, silent as the grave; no shouts, yells, cries; no running footsteps. Just a deep, dark silence. Except—

Except—

"The calm before the storm." Clint looks back the way they came. She focuses on a point somewhere over his shoulder, staring at the dirt wall, focusing on the ground. Except—

Except a deep-set sort of rumbling, one that starts at the balls of her feet and vibrates through her throat and rattles all her teeth, slowly, one that shakes the casings of the pipes around her and sets the underground complex creaking. In the silence the noise sets her on edge. She looks wide-eyed at Clint, who is watching some loose concrete bounce around by his foot. She says, very quietly, "Residual energy. Sling-back from the Cube. I didn't get any definite readings but that has to be it—"

Clint's walkie-talkie chooses this moment to crackle to life, but the noise seems dull and muted over the low rumble that is beginning to come from the bowels of the complex. "Anyone still in the building better get the hell out." Jane recognizes Nick Fury's voice and her frown deepens. "This is Priority Alpha. Get on a transport and get _gone_."

"Sir?" She's starting to get antsy, because she doesn't have _any_ sort of wish to be buried alive under a million pounds of rubble, but Barton's as steady as ever, talking quietly into the black, rather antiquated device (she expected them to have holographic imaging by now, being a secret government organization and all). "Any word on Hill?"

"I'm here. Loading the last of the tech now." New voice. Crackled and crumpled over the line. She vaguely remembers hearing it once before, but now the ground is really starting to shake, rattle, roll—

"I suggest you take Jane and hitch a ride with Hill, Agent Barton—now _move_!"

Clint deftly clips the walkie-talkie back on his belt. "So, run, yeah?" He jerks his head towards the far end of the hallway, the small, unassuming metal door.

"He called me Jane." Is all she can think to say, and she didn't think she could frown any more but she is, fiddling with her bottom lip, because there was something just so—so—

Ew.

"Yeah, run." Clint nods, and she feels his hands, steady on the lower part of her back, as he turns her towards the door and pushes her forward. The rumbling grows to a dull roar. She starts to think about being buried alive—

(One second of crushing blackness, but how much _pain_ would she actually feel?)

—and tries to go faster, almost tripping up in her haste, legs smashing up-down-up-down. She can't stop in time, skids into the door, and has to duck back as Clint reaches around her to punch in the key code. It opens with a heavy hiss, revealing—

"Where the hell are we?" She had expected a quinjet or something. Not a row of pick-ups and jeeps. The low-ceilinged room is as bad as the corridor, lights flickering on exposed wires, piles of wooden and metal crates, stamped with the S.H.I.E.L.D logo, creating a miniature maze, vehicles parked in nice, neat rows. Beyond them, a tunnel.

"Supply corridor." Clint jerks his chin towards the nearest car, a cargo-green jeep. "We need a ride."

"You couldn't have called something a little faster?" The whole foundation is beginning to tremble, sending the piles of crates crashing to the floor.

"Beggars can't be choosers." He shoves her out of the way as a couple of boxes tumble towards her. "You want to drive?"

"You're really calm about this whole situation, you know." She fights the rising hysteria. Her voice speeds up. "Considering we're going to get buried alive—"

"I'll drive." He takes her arm and pulls her towards the car. They're about half-way when a door at the far end of the room, obscured by more cargo, slams open. For a split second, in the bad lighting, she thinks she spies green, green, green, but, instead, Maria Hill extricates herself from the gloom. She clears a path through the growing rubble, her voice loud and firm over the noise.

"Get those loaded up, and by _now_ I mean _yesterday_. Rendezvous point 761—"

Men, weighted down by heavy metal boxes, immediately begin to load the trucks. Clint stops, doubling-back—

"Barton." Hill nods, once, and all Jane wants to know is _why the hell no one is freaking out_— "Any other word from the Director?"

"Only what you just heard. We need to get out of here."

"We'll be trapped in the blast radius." Jane feels the need to add, unnecessarily. Hill looks at her, and she thinks she registers shock—however slight—on the other woman's face, as if she'd forgotten about her until just now. Jane continues: "The Cube's been activated. The residual energy can't be contained—it's enough to blow this place sky high. Or swallow it whole. Actually, I'm not quite sure about how the explosion is going to take shape, considering the readings—"

"So we need to move, that's what your saying." Hill turns towards the men. "Hurry _up_!"

"What's that?" Clint's gone back to playing with the edges of his gun holster. Jane's gone back to worrying at her lip, which is starting to smart. Any second, now, any second and bam, rocks and crushing and _death_—

Hill sends her a single, short glance. Then, very quietly: "All the Phase 2 tech. This is the last of it."

Jane opens her mouth to ask _what's Phase 2_ and then—

_Crack_!

The gun shot is sharp, even amid the indistinct roar of the growing energy, and immediately Hill is on the floor, rolling behind the nearest stack of crates, her own firearm ready. Jane's pushed down by Clint, hard, so that she sprawls in an ungraceful heap, smashed up next to Hill, with Barton playing who-wants-to-be-the-human-shield. She hears the sounds of a scuffle as Clint sends a blind shot around the corner of their barricade. More gunfire. Yells.

"Who's that?" Hill mutters under her breath, peering around the other edge. "I've never seen him before."

"He's got the Cube." Jane says, glancing over the crate, mostly because yes, among the several black-dressed S.H.I.E.L.D agents there is one holding onto a silver briefcase. In the center—

Clint shoves her back down.

"Sir, I've got an armed hostile heading out the West Supply Corridor, requesting back-up—" Hill barks into the walkie-talkie on her hip. Jane shrugs off Clint's hand, pulling herself up quickly again, just for a moment, long enough to see Loki—there she said it, was everybody happy, Loki, Loki, Loki—settling gracefully into the back of the nearest pick-up, silver and gray, followed by—

The stupid son of a bitch.

He kidnapped Erik.

"Negative, Hill." Fury. Dark and oddly subdued.

"Then requesting permission to pursue without back-up—"

"Your orders are to evacuate, not pursue. I presume Jane Foster is with you?"

"Sir, they've got the Tesseract!"

"Foster takes precedence!"

"Sir, with all due respect—" Hill sends her a look that could stop a small army. She tries to convey her disbelief, because never, in the however-many months she had known Fury, had he attempted to accommodate her in _any _way—

The engine roars to life and his reply is lost; Hill throws the walkie-talkie so hard it shatters, crack-snap-breaking as it hits the concrete floor. She shouts, to the other agents:

"Stop them!"

The gunfire is useless. All of it misses, but somehow Jane thinks that's his doing. His. Loki. Loki's doing. The headlights of the car flicker on, illuminating the dark expanse of the tunnel wall. There are the agents piled into the front cab and then there is Erik, and then him, him—Loki, kneeling in the pick-up, eyes green, green, green, eaten up by the shadows in the dim light.

She stands; he turns, then.

And smirks. At her.

The car is thrown into reverse. He's perched like a bird in the flat bed, scepter just barely raised, hardly moving as the wheels start rolling, and all she can manage is: "Oh _no_, I don't _think_ so—"

She bolts, ducking her head as she runs. Around her: chaos. Men prone on the floor, bleeding slowly and she couldn't do anything for them, move on, move on, and men still shooting at the retreating form of the car, and Loki, long-haired, dark-eyed, changed—behind her Clint is yelling something, and so is Hill, but she ignores them, scrambling into the driver's side of the nearest jeep as the pick-up containing Loki and Erik peels out into the tunnel, heading up, up, up.

"I thought I was driving." Clint pulls himself into the passenger's seat; she hadn't even heard him move. Hill is different, loud and demanding as she jumps into the back and stands, amid the supports there. The keys are in the ignition.

"I'm going to put it on record that I'm not the one disobeying Fury, here." Hill says, once, then reloads her gun. Jane turns the keys and Clint settles his own gun against the dashboard.

"I hope you can drive stick."

"I hope you can shut up." She backs up so quickly the car smashes against the tunnel wall with a sickening sort of crunch.

"I'm starting to get the feeling that this is very personal." Clint says casually, as she throws the car into drive. It sputters in bursts after the pick-up.

"Oh? What ever gave you that impression?" She bites out, under breath, trying to focus on keeping the car straight, because it handles nothing like her Pinzguaer back home. She hits the edge of the wall, side mirror shearing off in a shower of sparks.

"Who is that guy?" Hill shouts over the wind, leaning against the supports making up the roof, arm outstretched and gun ready. Clint looks at Jane once, so quickly she almost doesn't catch it out of the corner of her eye. Then he yells back, "Don't know. Didn't get a good look at him."

"He's got Selvig!" Hill takes a shot but it misses, ricocheting off the metal lamps above. Jane has her foot pressed to the floor, swerving to avoid a support beam, hands clenched so tightly on the wheel that her knuckles begin to hurt as she pulls up alongside the pick-up and don't look at him, don't look at him—

"Ram them." Clint calmly pulls out another clip and jams it into his gun.

"_What?_"

Without further preamble he grabs a hold of the wheel and jerks it towards him; the car careens wildly sideways, metal meeting metal with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. He sends several shots towards the tires. She presses further on the gas, jeep inching ahead, until she can slide the car into reverse and swing about face and _hello_—

The jeep is kissing the pick-up and driving very, very backwards.

"Didn't take you for a stunt driver!" The wind is loud, the rumbling louder, and Clint smirks at her from the passenger seat as he leans out, trying to get a shot towards the back of the truck, towards Loki. She fights to keep her grip on the wheel, mirroring the movements of the driver in front of her. Hill's annoyed voice floats over her head, cursing, and then shots: one, two, three, right at the front windshield. The third takes out a passenger, an agent; blood spatters over the window, crimson and harsh and ugly.

"Wrong side."

"I don't need your _commentary_!" Hill shouts. Clint grins. Jane's hands slide over the wheel and there is _too much going on_—

—the clear path of the tunnel, behind her; Clint, twirling his bullets towards the back of the pick-up; Hill, aiming for the front; foot on gas, hands on wheel, and ignore the tip of the scepter she can barely see, ignore what's attached to it, ignore, ignore, ignore—

"Damn it!" The wheel slips. The jeep slides around, once, barely avoiding another support pole. The pick-up pulls ahead, towards the small circle of bluish light that she hopes (prays) is the end of the transport tunnel. She comes out of the turn, trying not to fight the spinout, like they taught her to do in driver's ed. Her foot eases up; her breath is coming rapidly, and she knows, now, that they've lost them.

"Pull up, I've almost got a clear shot—" Clint jerks his chin.

She doesn't have the heart to tell him that no shot at Loki is a clear shot, is about to, anyway, but then Hill is banging the butt of her gun against the top of the jeep and shouting, "Move, move, _move_!"

Jane's eyes flit to the rearview mirror, and—

"Oh, my God." She breathes.

The tunnel is collapsing behind them, road caving like brittle, hard mud, cracking and breaking with a loud blast, rocks and debris and lights and sparks flying up in their wake. The pick-up is out of the tunnel, but she couldn't care less, or maybe should could, but all she can think about right now is that there is no way they are out of the blast zone so drive, drive, drive—

She nicks the wall of the tunnel.

The car sputters angrily.

The rocks pour towards them.

(Her life flashes before her eyes, all green and silver and black—)

Then—

The cave-in stops, trapping the back half of the jeep suddenly in a cloud of dust and dirt, so suddenly she slams forward into the wheel, cracking her head and chest. Her foot is still on the pedal, pressed to the floor, but the tires are only trading air, making a sad, empty sound. She coughs hair from her mouth and dust from her lungs and tries to get the ringing in her ears to stop.

"Hill, you ok?" Clint's the first to speak. His voice is cracked, rough. Jane looks over to see a small patch, bright red, blooming over one eye, where he slammed into the dashboard. His gun is lost.

"Fine, no thanks to you." Hill pulls herself up and over the roof, sliding to the ground with remarkable stability, all things considered. Jane's slightly jealous. Her world is still spinning. The walkie-talkie crackles to life and she thinks, rather sluggishly: hey, what do you know, the vintage tech survives all. The other woman holds a hand out for where it rests, unbroken, on Clint's thigh; he tosses it towards her.

"Hill?" Fury's voice is very, very quiet.

"Sir. I'm with Agent Barton and Jane Foster in the West Transport Tunnel. The rest of the place is covered in rubble." Jane notices blood running down her temple as she twists towards the ruined entrance. "Don't know how many survivors."

"Coulson? You copy?" Fury doesn't sound sure and Jane's stomach drops until another voice snaps to life over the static of Clint's walkie-talkie speaker.

"Right here, sir." Pause. "The damage is…extensive."

"We'll need an evac team on the scene immediately." Fury is saying, but his voice is getting fainter as Hill walks slowly towards the tunnel entrance, twenty or so feet away, and Jane's too busy trying to unclench her fists from the wheel to care. Clint looks over at her with his steady, serious eyes and she grabs onto them like an anchor, because the rest of the world was falling to shit.

"I was on the New Mexico Incident." Abrupt. His eyes are trained on Hill, his voice too low for her to hear as she deals with Fury on the radio. Jane looks at the nail marks on her palm. "What happened to him, Jane?" He rubs a hand down his face. "Last I saw him, he didn't seem to be hell-bent on world domination."

"I don't know."

"What does he want?"

"I don't know."

"Jane are—"

"I don't _know_, ok, Clint?"

"—you ok." He finishes. She blinks, once, twice, thrice. She wonders if everybody made it out of the wreckage behind her. Those men and women down in the lab. The agents loading up the tech. She wonders how far the damage spread. She wonders why she'd even bothered. With anything.

Hill looks frustrated, up ahead. She hears: "…I think at this point we need to try to apprehend the Tesseract…" But then she shuts it out. Next to her Clint lets out a large sigh, shrugging back into his seat. "Loki, huh? Nice name."

"He's a god." She doesn't know why she says it. It's information she shouldn't share. Or she should. (Whose side is she on, anyway?)

"A what?"

"A god."

"You mean—" Clint stops, frowning. "You mean—not the—t_he_ Loki. Like—" He doesn't sound convinced. Not at all.

She shrugs. It hurts to move. To breathe. Hill looks like she's about to break her second walkie-talkie of the night. Jane fingers the cuts on her jacket. "Do you think," she starts, heading him off before he can ask her another question, "that you can get me a ride?"

"Anywhere in the continental United States."

God, he was amazing. So reliable. Unlike—"Good."

"Why?"

"I need to talk to someone."

"Now?"

"Now."

"Who?"

She bites out a bitter laugh. "Loki's brother."


	4. Chapter 4

**a/n:** i didn't mean for it to be this long, i'm sorry! i was on vacation, but now i'm back. so:

first off: there are some timing issues with the epilogue of _Loki_ and this story. i like the epilogue, so i'm going to leave it up, but for this story you can assume that everything up until, but not including, the heading: **One Month, Three Weeks, Three Hours, Twenty-Eight Minutes** happened. sorry for the confusion!

second off: i saw the amazing spider-man and i really liked it! shameless plug: i wrote a one-shot for it. you should all check it out. (_split, tear, burst, smash._)

third off: thank you for the reviews, faves, and alerts! they keep me writing!

fourth off: really long author's note, i'm sorry! so please read and review :)

* * *

The man's sweaty fingers clench her chin and pull up, pushing on the hinge of her jaw, forcing it open. The chair she's balanced on tips back precariously, and she feels the open air on the bare skin of her shoulders. From somewhere out of the very bottom of her vision she can see the wrinkled old man reaching for an industrial-strength pair of pliers.

"Well," he chuckles to himself, holding the instrument up to the flickering light of the exposed bulbs dangling above, "you may have to write it down."

She fights the urge to roll her eyes, because that would be breaking character, and she would break character for no man, least of all Georgi Luchkov and his gang of hopeless henchmen—he turns, wearing a small, slight smile, tipping the pliers back and forth in his hand.

It would hurt. No medication, no anything, just the cool metal against the square of her tooth and then pull, root and all—

Of course, they wouldn't get within three feet of her face, much less her mouth. So the whole point was rather moot—now it was simply a matter of keeping him talking, in order to trace his contacts back to—

_Brring! Brring!_

Everything pauses. The man, who's gripping her mouth, forcing it into an oval, suddenly lets go, reaching for his pocket. She tips forward, chair legs firmly planting on the ground once more.

Small hiccup.

Luchkov lets the hand tool drop heavily to his side, annoyance clearly written over his features. As his goon presses a button and puts the cell phone he pulled from his pocket to his ear, the old man sends an accusatory glare in her direction, as if this was somehow all her fault. She almost shrugs, but remembers her cover, and settles for something between confusion and relief.

There is a long pause, in which she taps her toes against the dirty concrete beneath her, and then the man hands Luchkov the phone, which is strange, but then he says in broken English, "It is for her," and that's even stranger, that's when she knows—

Something is up.

Damn it all to hell.

Luchkov gingerly takes the phone, still looking at her suspiciously, as if she somehow managed to bug the thing with an explosive device—which she could of, if that had been part of the plan—and places it against his ear. For a moment he stares hard at a spot above her right shoulder. Then she hears, in a familiar but small, tinny voice over the phone speaker:

"Put the woman on the phone, or I will blow up the block before you can make the lobby."

Luchkov looks deeply offended. She would think it was funny, if she wasn't so damned annoyed at being interrupted. The old man settles the phone in the crook of her ear and her shoulder; she clamps down. Immediately:

"We need you to come in."

"Are you kidding?" Phil Coulson had never been one to try and order her around. She didn't like him starting now. "I am _working_."

"This takes precedence."

Her gut tightens and the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. She licks her lips, tries not to think of all the possible reasons this could be happening right now, and stays focused on the situation at hand. Which meant—

"I'm in the middle of an interrogation, this moron is giving me everything." She looks up at Luchkov as she says this.

"I don't give everything." He says rather slowly, looking between the man on his right and the one on his left. She raises her eyebrows, continuing.

"Look, you can't pull me out of this right now."

"Natasha," Coulson breaks in, before she even finishes, and she bites the inside corner of her lip because what if—"we've activated the Avengers Initiative."

She exhales thickly. (She won't say it, won't even really let herself think it, but she prefers this to the alternative.) "Let me put you on hold."

She glances up at Luchkov.

First: the invitation. Get the target as close as humanly possible under the situation.

He approaches to take the phone from the cradle between her shoulder and ear, grabs it, pulls—

And she sends a kick as hard as she can into his knee, so his arm swings up and the phone clatters to the ground several feet away. As the man falls she throws her head forward into his own, hard, crack, snap, so that she is blinking away stars.

Second: the assault. Kick target's ass.

She gets to her feet, world spinning slightly, half-crouched over because her hands are still tied firmly to the old wooden chair. The first man approaches—she delivers a swift kick to his stomach, with more power because she's standing, so he topples onto his back. She ducks under the punch of the second man and swings around, using her momentum to carry the chair legs behind her into his lower back. He falls heavily.

Third: the double-tap. Make sure they stay down.

She rolls, rather awkwardly with the chair, in the direction of the first man, who is just regaining his feet, sends the pointed end of one chair leg into his foot, sends the back of her head into his nose. She feels the blossoming of a headache but ignores it, ignores everything except the fight at hand—sweeps the man's legs from beneath him and jumps to the second man, throwing her foot into his crotch.

Dirty fighting, Clint would say.

Anything goes, she would retort.

She backs herself up and springboards off the prone figure of the first man, back flipping onto the curled form of the second. The chair breaks, wood splintering in a million pieces over flesh and concrete. She grabs one chair leg and springs back to her feet, drifting sideways to avoid the punch of the first man and grabbing his outstretched hand, throwing an elbow into his forearm and breaking four of his fingers. He drops to the floor like a rock.

By this point Luchkov is finally staggering to his feet with a heavy groan, one hand to his head. She swings up and around the second man, using her weight to slam his head into the concrete, and rolls forward, finding a chain, lying twisted on the ground—grasping it in one hand, she deftly gets to her feet, sending her elbow into Luchkov's head and wrapping the chain around his ankles. He teeters for a moment, before she pushes him forcefully over the side of the opening she had recently been hanging over, down into the first story.

He screams and screams and screams until the chain jerks tight and he finally comes to a stop.

"I thought we had put the Avengers Initiative to bed?" She says calmly, picking up the cell phone from its position somewhere near the first man's left arm. Coulson replies, equally unruffled:

"The situation calls for it. I'll brief you on everything when you get back. But first, we need you to talk to the big guy."

She's worrying at the inside of her lip. Act first, questions later. "Coulson, you know that Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me."

"No, I've got Stark. You get the big guy."

The reality of her situation hits her as she grabs the straps of her shoes, looking at the two half-dead figures, listening to the third struggle in the air below, and all she can think to say is: "Bozhe moi."

_Clap. Clap. Clap. _

The noise is sharp staccato gunfire in the growing quiet of the warehouse; it startles her, badly, but she betrays it only by an extra blink.

"You must be the famous Black Widow."

The voice is deep, smooth, with the hint of an accent she would have to identify as being closely—but not quite—equivalent to British. She stoops, setting her shoes back on the ground, straightening slowly, senses alert, because anyone who could sneak up on her—

Well. She would almost call them a threat.

"I am impressed."

"I don't have very many admirers." She says into the darkness. Now that she's looking for it, she can feel the presence of another figure, deep in the shadows: a glint of gold, a hint of green.

"Oh, but you should." Slow, deliberate steps. Equally measured. The kind of steps a hunter would use to approach a wild animal. She lets herself relax, fighting every instinct in her body that was screaming at her to run, run, run—

The man approaches from her right, out of a particularly heavy patch of darkness not illuminated by the balding light of the fluorescent bulbs.

(Height: 6'2''

Weight: 182 pounds, without armor—with armor, unknown

Armor: gold coloring but not material—would be impractical, soft; unknown alloy, then

Weapon: scepter, left hand

Threat level: unknown

Alone—)

"Yes, do not worry; I am alone in this little endeavor. I would have—should have—come armed most heavily, to meet someone of your caliber, but I am afraid my reserves are depleted, and so could only teleport one." He's pale, and it makes the black of his hair darker, the green of his eyes brighter. He's smiling a half-cocked smile, acrid and bitter around the edges. She tilts her head, raises one eyebrow, and waits.

It's best to wait, in these situations, she hears Clint telling her. You don't know your opponent, so get them to tell you something—but you don't need me to teach you that, do you, Nat?

"And you are?" She's holding the phone lightly at her side, knowing that Coulson could hear every word, wondering if this man knows it, too.

"I am Loki." He says his name like it should mean something to her. She briefly flashes through anyone she came in contact with recently—anyone Coulson could have sent—anyone she could have interrogated—but comes up empty.

No matches. She's never seen his face before. Never heard his voice.

"I am extremely interested in your abilities, Ms. Romanoff."

"And where did you hear of these abilities?"

"From a reliable source, I assure you—and after _that_ little performance, any doubts I had were erased." His grin is wicked sharp. She begins calculating escape routes.

Front is cut off. Fifty paces around the hole to her back was an open window. Unlocked door on the other side. She could take the scenic route via Luchkov—

"I'm afraid that I'm no longer for hire." She smiles back, sharp, tight, because she's drudging up memories she does not want to touch. "But thank you, for the offer."

"Oh, I'm afraid it wasn't an offer."

She drops the phone.

He moves.

She sidesteps the sharp, deadly point of the spear, kicking up into the man's forearm, where his armor had seemed weakest—

But somehow he's gone and she's only kicking air, and quite suddenly she feels a strong grip on her shoulder, twisting her roughly around, and for a long, heady moment she sees the tip of the spear bearing down upon her chest—

It does not penetrate, merely grazes, but the touch burns like fire up her neck, eyes, head, filling her world with blue and clouding her thoughts—

"Natasha?" She can hear, as if through a tunnel, Phil Coulson yelling from the phone. "Natasha!" She wants to answer him but her limbs are so heavy and her thoughts are so sluggish and isn't it better, to follow like this—

"Welcome to the army, Ms. Romanoff." The man smirks, and why did she ever think he could be a threat—he owned the truth—he _was_ the truth—

"Of course."

She finds herself smiling back.

"Natasha!"

* * *

"Run it by me again."

He watches out of the corner of his eye as Jane takes a deep, steadying breath and says, rather tightly, "I've ran it by you three times already."

"I know, I know you have." He turns his eyes back to the road. They are driving into the night, highway empty, stretches of desert pushing out into the horizon on either side. The car's headlights cut soft swatches through the thick night air. "I'm just trying to wrap my head around the whole, you know, god part."

"I don't think they're actually _gods_." She says, running a hand through her hair. "More like, higher-powered beings."

"Nuance."

She shakes her head, lapsing into silence. He lets three miles pass. Then: "Ok, so where does Loki's crazy brother live in New York, exactly? Brooklyn? Manhattan? The subway?"

She opens her mouth to answer, but then his phone rings—he looks over apologetically, keeping one hand on the wheel and fishing into his pockets with the other. Finding it, he quickly switches hands, flipping open the small display and pressing it to his ear, preparing to say _Agent Barton speaking_ only—

"Barton?"

"Coulson?" He starts. "I wasn't expecting you." There is a long pause on the other end. He watches, distracted, as Jane taps a beat idly on the glove box in front of her. The road is empty for the next twenty miles. When Coulson still doesn't say anything, he feels the need to reiterate the lie he told earlier. "I told the Director I was taking Ms. Foster to a safe location. We're en route to an airport as we—"

"Barton. Natasha's been compromised."

He finds his foot is letting up on the gas, inch by inch, until the car rolls to a slow stop in the middle of the highway. The phone is clasped loosely to his ear. The horizon seems so far away. He stares at the harsh line of it.

Just stares.

Around him he's vaguely aware of sounds in the night—the idling of the engine, the hoot of a desert bird, the chirp of a bug. The air is warm, the jeep is half-open, and he'd been comfortable, but now he isn't—now he feels the need to move and jump and run, because running had to be faster than this damn car—

"Clint?" Jane is turned in the passenger seat, looking concerned. "Clint, what's wrong?"

"Where's Romanoff now?" He says by way of response. Over the phone he hears a heavy sigh.

"We don't know."

"Who—?"

"We're running voice confirmations; we don't want to jump to conclusions." Coulson sounds like he's holding something back. He can't seem to bring himself to care.

"But she's alive."

"We think so."

He continues staring at the horizon line. He thinks the sun is starting to rise, but it might be a trick of the headlights, so he closes his eyes, and then he feels Jane's hand on his shoulder—

"Clint?"

Right. Ok.

Pull yourself together, Barton. This was Nat they were talking about. She'd be fine.

"Barton?"

"Yeah. I'm here. I'm going to continue with Ms. Foster to the checkpoint." The checkpoint he lied about, the checkpoint with another potential fugitive, the checkpoint somewhere in New York. "I'll report back as soon as I can."

"I'll keep you posted."

The line goes dead.

"Let's turn around." Jane says immediately, as he throws his phone into the cup holder behind the gear shift. "We can stop. We can turn around—"

"No use now." He replies simply, easing the car back to life.


	5. Chapter 5

**a/n:** hey everyone—thank you so much for all your support and understanding! i can't promise prompt updates, but i can promise that i _will _update. anyway, i'm going to keep this short, because it's been two/three months.

**warnings:** language, because tony is a foul-mouth

please read and review :)

* * *

"You're shitting me, right?"

"I wish I was. But I'm not. So."

"…things just got complicated."

"As if they weren't already."

"An alien threatening invasion of Earth? I can deal with that." Pause. "Tony Stark?" Long pause. "You're killing me slowly, Jane."

"Grow a pair. Come on."

"Killing. Me. Slowly."

* * *

"Levels are holding steady…I think."

"Of course they are, I was directly involved." Tony Stark decides champagne is appropriate for the moment and pours a generous helping in two, thin-stemmed glasses. "Which brings me to my next question: how does it feel to be a genius?"

Pepper turns around, leaning heavily against the holotable lit blue with the three-dimensional read-out of the new, fully functioning and completely amazing Stark Tower. She's reaching out for the glass before he even makes it around the corner of the bar. "Well, ha, I really wouldn't know now, would I?"

There's something alien about self-deprecating Pepper, mostly because he's used to her deprecating him, so he makes a noncommittal noise with his mouth, fingers brushing hers as he hands over the (coughlesser-filledcough) glass. He points at her with his pinky. "What do you mean? All this came from you."

He punctuates the "you" with a jab, if only to send the point home and get the world spinning on its proper axis again. Of course, if you asked him right then and there, he would say that he meant it. Every single word. Only—

"No. All this came from that." Pepper touches a graceful finger against the arc reactor glowing faintly through the thinning material of his Black Sabbath shirt, the sound echoing in the modern, stark (ha-ha, _stark_) apartment. He rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, wanting to say something along the lines of: _you know, babe, we can talk me all day, but let's just avoid the chest plate that's keeping my heart beating for a bit, alright?_ But he's hardly drunk enough for _that_ sort of personal tangent. Instead he sets his glass on the holotable and positions his arms on either side of her. "Give yourself some credit, please. Stark Tower is your baby. Give yourself..." her breath is mingling with his and it's very distracting, enough so that he isn't thinking clearly when he says, "twelve percent of the credit."

"Twelve percent?" She raises her eyebrows.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit-faced, mother—

(Hell hath no fury like Pepper Potts, scorned.)

Tony straightens, making vague gestures in the air as he tries to backtrack (mayday, _mayday_). "An argument can be made for fifteen."

"Twelve percent for _my_ baby?" (Well, she got through her self-deprecating phase fast enough, didn't she?) She swirls the golden liquid in her glass, taking a long sip, before sliding out from beneath him and walking to the couch. He's left with a spectacular view of her blue jeans shorts and (long, long, lengthy, long) legs.

"Well, I did do all the heavy lifting," he coughs out, rubbing the back of his neck, because he can't dig himself a bigger hole so whatever (and God, he loves casual Pepper dress). He saunters forward. "Literally, I lifted the heavy things. And sorry, but the security snafu? That was on you." He settles on the floor next to her, biting his tongue to keep from asking why she's choosing to sit on the concrete instead of the three-thousand dollar European leather affair she's leaning her goddamn elbow against.

"Oh," she's shaking her head, classic _I-can't-believe-you_ smile on her face.

(Here lies Tony Stark, pissed off Potts, lost his heart. RIP.)

"My private elevator—"

Not the right thing. Definitely not the right—

"You mean _our_ elevator?"

"—was teeming with sweaty workmen. I'm going to pay for that comment about percentages in some subtle way later, aren't I?"

"Not gonna be that subtle."

He shoots her a look over the curved top of his glass of champagne. He likes the red of her hair. It isn't really red, more like red-gold. Which, he guesses, is technically some form of red—

"I tell you what. Next building is going to say 'Potts' on the tower." He clinks his glass against hers, holding it there.

"On the lease," she corrects with a wicked grin, knocking back the rest of her drink.

Holy hell and Nick Fury's eye-patch—

"Call your mom, can you bunk over?"

And he just might be out of the frying pan. He watches intently as Pepper opens her mouth (she has a good mouth) and—

"Friends! I have purchased more of these things called Pop Tarts at the local market!"

God. Dammit.

Tony groans, setting his glass on the table and falling forward into Pepper's shoulder. She pats him sympathetically, but her voice, when she speaks, is entirely devoid of the emotion. "You're the one who adopted him."

He peers sideways, out the open door leading to the balcony. The New York lights should be bright and beautiful, but he can't make them out because of the _someone _who should be _anywhere but here._

"Thor," Tony straightens, putting his elbow on the marble table, settling his chin in his hands with a smile somewhere between _I-am-going-to-eat-your-firstborn_ and _I-just-want-to-bang-my-girlfriend-please-get-the-hint_, "I thought I told you: no flying hammers."

The man in question enters into the soft, yellow lighting of the room, looking too big for his lumberjack plaid and blue jeans, neither of which match the hammer twirling to a stop at his side. (And you know what they say about guys with big hammers.) He sets it down in the middle of the jet-black floor. It clinks, like glass, and Tony flinches, because the marble was an import, too. Thor says, "It is faster. I was in need of sustenance, and the roads of this world are constantly clogged."

"You could've ordered a pizza."

Thor shrugs. He takes two giants steps to the bar and pops the top of the nearest decanter of whiskey, then downs the whole thing in one gulp. Tony looks horrified back at Pepper, mouthing, "That was from Europe."

"Besides, my friends, I am interested in learning more of your culture. Take, for instance, the man I met today—"

Pepper cuts him off, saying, slowly, "Thor, next time I really think you should call a cab. Or ask Tony to take you."

"Or Ms. Potts. Ms. Potts can—" Tony breaks in but then Hurricane Pepper blows through.

"Tony can take you," she repeats forcefully, with a thin smile.

"Yeah, buddy," Tony sighs, as Thor places down the bottle and pulls out a rather flattened box of Pop Tarts from his side pocket, ripping it open with one large hand, "we're trying to _hide_ you, remember? Not lead the entire New York population to believe that they're under attack by aliens."

The telephone rings.

"_There is a phone call for you, sir_."

"Jarvis, we need to work on your reaction time."

"_Of course, sir."_

"I appreciate your concern, Tony Stark," Thor smiles widely, coming to collapse on the couch behind them, one Pop Tart in his hand and another on the way to his mouth, "but I am no alien."

"No. Of course not. That's why you, you know, aren't from Earth."

"Tony, the phone."

"Alright, woman, hold on—" he smashes his finger sightlessly against the receiver, wishing Thor weren't sitting so close, because the guy had no concept of personal space and he hopes to _God_ that is the blonde's knee pressed into his back and not something else,"—hello?"

There is a long pause. Then: "Tony?"

He starts, looking down at the caller ID. "Jane? What the hell?"

"Hello to you, too," is the dry response.

"I thought you were, you know—off doing…stuff." (Code for: finding out where Fury keeps the skeletons.)

"Jane Foster! My friend, how are you?" Thor leans forward, right between Tony and Pepper, jamming towards the receiver and the disembodied voice. Pepper raises her eyebrows and her hands, leaning further away. Tony drops his head towards the table, remembers at the last second that it's marble, and wonders when everything got so goddamn complicated.

"Great, Thor, just—" she stops. Tony lifts his head to stare at the image on the phone, because her voice is strangely constricted, contrary to her smiling picture. She continues after a beat, "Well, no. I'm not fine, actually. Can I—can I come up?"

Tony presses the green light on the touch screen and smirks into the phone, even though Jane can't see. "You're all clear, babe." Then he cuts the line, worrying at his top lip. He feels Pepper's gaze boring a hole into the side of his head, managing to cut through the beefy blockade that is Thor's arm, and finally gives in. "Hm?"

"Tony." Her eyebrows are drawn down slightly. (He feels the sudden urge to smooth the lines away. Then he wonders when he became so romantic. Then he remembers a date night and a movie called _The Notebook_. Then he wants to barf.) "Something's wrong. Jane wouldn't just come without calling unless something was—"

"I know, Pep." He rubs a hand down his face, trying to make a joke of the whole thing. (Jokes. Jokes are good.) "But, I mean, how bad could it be, right?"

"Do you think Ms. Foster is alright?" Thor leans back momentarily, but then his legs find the area between Tony and Pepper and settle there. Tony fights the urge to start a boxing match with the man on the couch (winner takes space). Instead:

"I'm sure she's fine. Everyone just needs to stop freakin' out, ok?"

The elevator door behind them opens, and, as one, they all turn towards it.

One small girl with a nasty-ass bruise across her forehead, a cut on her lip, and tangled hair, standing next to—

"What the hell is he doing here?" Tony is on his feet immediately, practically shoving Thor's face into the couch cushions as he tries to hide the big, blonde man. He might as well be a mouse trying to move an elephant for all the good it does, so he just repeats, with as much indignity as he can muster: "What the _hell_ is he doing here?"

Pepper, who also stood upon the elevator opening, is looking horrified at Jane's forehead, but this quickly turns to anger as she twists towards him. He can feel her silent message—

_You need to sort out your priorities, Tony Stark. _

He snorts.

Yeah, whatever.

All he can seem to focus on _rightthissecond_ is the eagle insignia plastered over the man's uniform, which is so very obviously S.H.I.E.L.D that he wants to suit up and blast something. He can't remember if they've met before, he doesn't think they have, and then the man opens his mouth and says—

"Agent Barton, sir. Agent Romanoff has told me a lot about you."

God. Dammit.

Again.

"What the hell is _he_ doing here?" Tony thinks if he can keep changing the emphasis maybe Jane will feed him some answers. The young scientist steps from the elevator, followed by Agent Bartok or whatever his name had been, and into the lobby of the apartment. The doors close silently behind her. She runs a nervous hand through her hair and says, at last:

"You can trust him."

Which isn't much of an explanation.

At. All.

He opens his mouth to demand another, _better_ explanation, but finds his voice dying in his throat at the look Pepper shoots him. Thor is struggling to get over the back of the couch (which, by the way, was now covered with a layer of strawberry, and what, did it look like he was a billionaire who could replace that shit on a whim?), which he manages in a surprisingly graceful manner. Three steps, and he's at Jane's side, a hand going to her battered face. "Jane Foster, you are injured," he says, rather unnecessarily.

"I'll get the ice." Pepper moves to the bar.

"I'll get the sanity—oh, wait." Tony crosses his arms. "I'm fresh out."

"Does he always treat guests like this?" Bark is staring straight at him but addressing Jane, who laughs nervously as Thor's hands twist her face one way, then another, examining the injuries under the glow of the lights above. (Thor's gentility always surprises him. He thinks it's surprising Jane right now, what with her flushing redder than Pepper's hair and all.)

"No?"

"You sound very certain."

"Look, Agent Barrymore," Tony walks from the couch towards the elevator, ignoring Pepper's hiss of _be civil_ as she crosses to Jane with a large bag of ice, "I think you have to know that me and S.H.I.E.L.D don't really have the best track record."

"It's been noted."

"Then may I make another note: you should leave."

"Tony."

He looks sharply at Jane. One of her hands is gripping Thor's tightly, holding it away from her face; the other has the bag of ice. Her eyes keep flitting to it. She looks like she's about to be sick. Pepper takes ahold of her elbow and guides her to one of the barstools. He says, at last, "Yeah?"

She settles, leaning heavily against the counter top, and looks past him towards Thor. The big man's hand is still hanging in the air.

His eyes are sad.

(Was Tony missing something here? A telepathic conference?)

She opens and closes her mouth several times. Then: "I was working on the Cube."

"I think _we_ should think about what _we_ discuss in the presence of Fury's eyes and ears, here." Tony jerks his chin in Bart's direction.

"He knows who Thor is." Jane loses her grip on the bag of ice and it falls to the ground, sounding like breaking glass on the floor.

"What?" (Pepper)

"He knows of me?" (Thor)

"_Shit_." (Tony)

"I know you're Loki's brother," Bartok says, and he has serious, calm eyes, but even they widen considerably as Thor's huge form twists slowly towards where he stands, still by the elevator doors. There is a long, heavy silence, where all Tony can hear is Jane's ragged breathing (and is it wrong that he wants to grin at how uncomfortable Barron is all of a sudden?).

"Mortal. Be careful of what you speak."

The agent (to give him some credit—one percent of the credit) meets Thor's eyes. "I know what I'm saying. Jane said we needed to talk to you. You're Loki's brother."

"Have care when you utter my brother's name!" Thor roars; two steps, and he has his forearm jammed beneath Barty's neck, slamming him all the way into the doors of the elevator. Pepper shouts, Tony takes a pacifying step forward (because, really, he already lost a couch), but it's Jane who stops it—

"Thor!"

The silence, again. (Remember that time, five minutes ago, when he and Pepper were about to get it on?

Yeah. He does to.)

"I saw Loki, earlier." Jane's voice isn't small, just raspy around the edges. Tony wishes he could say something to help, but he didn't know—doesn't know—Thor's brother, has only heard bits, pieces, of the story, and so he says nothing at all.

Which might be a first.

"What?" The disbelief is palpable in Thor's voice. "Truly?" He turns his sharp blue gaze back on her, eyebrows drawn down in an angry slash. Tony watches as Bartok's grip tightens on the forearm holding him in place; the man's feet are several inches off the ground, mouth gasping for air.

"He came through the portal."

"The portal?" Thor drops Bart suddenly, so that the man spills ungracefully to the floor, and takes a step towards her. "That is impossible. The Bifrost was destroyed. I scoured Midgard. I found no trace of my brother's magic, no trace of his skill, no trace of him—nothing." Thor clenches a fist, repeating, "That is impossible."

"He came for war," Jane whispers.

Before Thor can respond Bartle, rubbing his neck and leaning slightly over his knees, breaks in with, "Ok, maybe we should all start at the beginning, which would mean me finding out why you're housing an alien that S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't know about." His sharp, serious eyes find Tony's.

"A) he's not an alien, B) that's kinda the point, and C) that's hardly the beginning." Tony finds his voice at last.

"What did Loki say? You must repeat his words exactly as he spoke them, Jane."

"You're brother was five kinds of crazy when we saw him—Jane's head? His fault. You expect her to repeat back all his mumbo-jumbo?"

"I warned you once, mortal—"

"I think everyone should just calm down—"

"Pepper, be real, no one's going to calm down here—"

"I just do not understand—"

"Well, that makes two of us—"

"I won't—"

And then the phone rings, almost shrill, and Jarvis's voice says, calmly quieting the growing mayhem:

"_Sir, you have a telephone call. Agent Coulson is on the line."_

"Jarvis, we really need to work on your reaction time," Tony says, because he can think of nothing else to say. He back tracks towards the receiver on the table, trying to ignore the way Thor looks like he wants to maim Agent Barter and Jane looks like she wants to throw up and Pepper looks like she wants to kill someone (namely him)—

He hits the button on the receiver. Immediately:

"Mr. Stark, we need to talk."

_Damn. It_. "You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message," he says quickly into the phone, gesturing dramatically with his free hand because everyone needs to _quiet the fuck down_—

"This is urgent." Coulson's voice is so very _Coulson_, and by that he means polite. And quiet. And annoying.

"Then leave it urgently." (As if that wasn't _obvious_—)

The elevator _brrings!,_ and Tony officially loses his shit.

"Hide, hide—I don't care where you do it, just—Thor, get behind the bar, don't make a sound—you follow him, Agent Barty, because I doubt _you're_ supposed to be here—Jane, you too—anyone moves and I'll personally blast you—" the elevator doors slide open just as Thor, looking entirely unpleased at the undignified manner in which he was being treated, ducks down behind the bar and Tony finishes lamely with, "you sexy thing," in Pepper's general direction.

She's holding the bag of ice—now practically water—in between her hands, looking harried and slightly shell-shocked, but she immediately snaps her work face on (God, he loves this woman) and says, cheerfully, "Phil! Come in!"

"Phil?" Tony drops the phone onto the couch, pointing towards the man walking in from the elevator, looking rightio prim and propah in the little lord's new suit—"Uh, his first name is Agent."

And all the while his mind is going a million miles a minute because first Jane, babbling about some supposedly dead guy, then S.H.I.E.L.D showing up at his front door step—

Things don't look so hot.

"Mr. Stark. Ms. Potts. I can't stay."

"We're celebrating." Pepper walks towards Coulson, pointing to the champagne glasses, and Tony thinks the smeared Pop Tart looks a lot more questionable now in this lighting. He slides up next to her, saying under his breath, "Which is why he can't stay."

He hears a shuffle of movement from behind the bar and coughs loudly. Coulson raises one eyebrow in his direction. "Sick?"

"Horrible. Thing—just—the eyes and the nose and ugh." Tony smiles winningly at him, watching his blue eyes sweep the room and—

_The hammer_.

"What's that?" Coulson gestures formally and Tony turns, feigning surprise. (Fortunately, he's always been a good liar.)

"Oh, that? Gift from Pepper. Got it for me when we were in Turkey. Just a decorative thing. A replica or something. Like a fountain, only for the inside. Now—why are you here?" He shifts his shoulder into Pepper's and she, in turn, moves slightly sideways, blocking the thing from view.

"We need you to look this over." Coulson attempts to hand him a slim, black file embossed with the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem. The man's eyes are still trying to find that stupid hammer, so Tony says, quickly, "Jarvis, dim the lights."

"_Yes, sir._"

"Just getting ready for a romantic evening." Tony smiles again. Then: "I don't like being handed things."

"That's fine, because I love to be handed things." Pepper takes the file from Coulson and passes it across to him. It feels like air in his hands. There's another sort of squeak from behind the bar and she coughs roughly into his face, causing him to flinch. "Sorry! Must be catching whatever Tony's got."

Coulson smiles affably.

"Official consulting hours are between eight and five, every other Thursday." (Which is Tony speak for: leave.)

"This isn't a consultation."

"Is this about the Avengers?" Pepper breaks in, which is good, because Tony might hit something otherwise. "Which I know nothing about."

"The Avengers Initiative was scraped, I thought—and I didn't even qualify." Tony begins a slow walk towards his holotable by the bar, resisting the urge to peer down at the three figures huddled on the other side as he does. He stops directly in front of the hammer, blocking it with his out-turned feet, but when he tries to slide it away the thing won't budge.

It's like the _Great Wall of China_ just landed in his apartment and he almost slips trying to kick it to the side—

"I didn't know that either." He can hear the smile in Pepper's voice. (_Hardy-har-har, Potts_.)

"Yeah, apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed. Don't play well with others." He turns, backing his ankles against the hammer and fitting the slim top of the briefing file into its holder. The screen flickers to life, illuminating countless files, all stamped with an eagle in the left corner.

"That I did know." (_Ok, Pep, you're getting a little too into character here—_)

"This isn't about personality profiles anymore." Tony can feel Coulson's eyes, focused entirely on the area around his feet, so he says:

"Ms. Potts—got a sec?"

"Have a month," she says to Coulson. He hears the pad of her bare feet on the marble and feels her sudden warmth at his side and together the blur of their legs hides the hammer from view. He whispers, under his breath, "We're in some deep shit."

"No, _you're_ in some deep shit."

He looks sideways, startled, only to find she's biting her lip and fighting a smile.

"Just kidding. You know I'm with you until the end, Mr. Stark."

"Wouldn't have it any other way, Ms. Potts." He smiles, soft around the edges, and then, being him, has to go and ruin it—"And I thought we were having a moment."

Pepper raises her eyebrows. "I was having twelve percent of a moment."

Ouch.

She continues, "Anyway, whatever happened with J—" she stops. "This is serious. Phil seems rather shaken."

"Why is he Phil?" Tony nearly forgets the hammer blocking entirely and turns towards her, except she kicks him lightly in the shins. He straightens, fighting the urge to, once again, look towards the bar, and instead taps a few buttons on the screen in his hands.

"What is all this?"

She's so levelheaded. He glances sideways and wonders how he got so lucky, then shakes his head, once. "This is, uh," and he spreads his fingers in a sharp, outward motion, once, so that the files on the small screen fly to surround him and Pepper as holograms, all dull black, all with video clips. He sees one of a man going green and recognizes Bruce Banner, the gamma radiation genius who he'd read several reports on. In another, a square-jawed man in the stars and stripes was riding a motorcycle through landmines. Exploding landmines. (He looks away from that one quickly, mostly because Howard always thought Captain America was the best thing since sliced bread, forget about you, son—) In another file he spies Bartley or Bartok or Barton or whoever next to Natalie Rushman aka Natasha Romanoff aka a woman who almost managed to be as scary as Pepper. And finally—

A thin man, in golden armor clearly not made on Earth. Green, green eyes, a hawk nose, a fierce look—in the background of the footage, a small girl. The streets look deserted, and in the distance he can see sand. The man's face is determined, but not in a way that Tony would necessarily classify as _evil. _Shifty, maybe. Tricky. Slippery. It takes him a moment to realize why it looks so familiar.

He's worn that look before.

_A lot_ before.

(So that one time he got called to New Mexico and actually complied with S.H.I.E.L.D orders, only he came too late—) "And what am I supposed to do with all of this?"

"Look it over," Coulson responds, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "And seeing as you don't like to be handed things, I'll give the transport information to Ms. Potts."

"Woh, woh, woh—_transport_ information?"

"If you agree to join the Initiative, we have a little job for you."

"And by 'we' you mean Fury."

Coulson says nothing. Tony rubs his eyes, acutely aware of the others listening in. "We'll see."

The other man doesn't seem happy with his answer, but he doesn't seem angry, either—just politely there, arms clasped in front of him, sharp eyes continually flashing to the obscured object by Tony's feet. He says, softly, "You should be made aware, Mr. Stark, that the situation at hand is a matter of international security."

"Guilt trips never worked on me, Agent."

Pepper lets out a long sigh, which draws Tony away from the scorching battle of wits and back to the holographic readouts surrounding them. At last she says, "You need to talk to the others. I'm going to get Phil out of your hair—I'll take the jet to DC tonight."

"Tomorrow," Tony responds immediately, mostly because he wants her there, wants her calming presence and that lovely level head—

"You have a lot of homework."

"I don't like where this is going, Pep." And Tony looks at her, really looks. "I have a bad feeling. I—" want you. Here. Next to me.

Except none of that comes out. She smiles up at him; out of the corner of his eye he sees that Coulson had the decency to look away. She whispers, "I'm sure this'll all blow over."

And before he can protest she kisses him. For a moment he forgets entirely about the hammer and the people hiding behind the bar and his death-match against S.H.I.E.L.D and Coulson—

There is only Pepper and him.

Him and Pepper.

Like always.

She breaks away too quickly, with a breathy, "Work hard," and then she turns to Coulson. "Looks like he's got a lot of info to sort through. Any chance you're driving by the airport?"

"I—" for a moment Coulson's façade, blank, polite, falters, and Tony can see him scouring the black marble for the hammer, but then it slips back into place and he says, "I can drop you. Here is Mr. Stark's transportation information." Pepper walks to the elevator, and Coulson hands her a thick manila envelope. "Fury picked you out especially for the job."

"Considering how much the man hates me, it must be a good job." Tony turns back to the screens, trying to ignore the feeling in his gut. Pepper calls, "Tony, I'm going to put it on the bar."

"Roger that." But he doesn't look back, just whispers, "Jarvis, open the pod bay doors."

"_As you wish, sir_."

"The airport, Ms. Potts?" Coulson steps backwards.

"That would be fantastic," and Pepper is in the elevator and Tony has a horrible feeling and as the doors close he listens to her ask, "So I want to hear about the cellist—is that still a thing?"

Then: nothing.

He looks at the files before him. One is on a cube—the Cube, he should say—and he picks up the holographic image of it in his hand, twirling it on the pad of his index finger. "You can come out now, children."

He wants a drink. Whiskey and vodka and beer; anything and everything together.

There is a general grumbling, which he ignores. When he looks over Jane is leaning heavily against the bar, Thor looks like a thundercloud, and Bartz just looks confused as he says, "I think I'm officially a renegade."

"Not yet," Tony turns back to the data. "I was hoping not to get involved in S.H.I.E.L.D. But things change. Hey, Thor, you ready to get your brother?" Tony pulls up the latest incident report but his eyes only skim over the words: Cube, energy, death. He continues to twirl the item in question on the tip of his finger.

"That he is alive—I cannot—will not believe it until I have sighted it with mine own eyes. I have buried him once. I will not do so again."

"Alright, bud." Tony drops the holographic cube in disgust, tasting the lingering Pepper-ness on his lips as he turns. Bartok is pouring Jane a drink (and sure, that's fine, let's go through his entire liquor stash in one night); she grabs it gingerly, takes a sip, grimaces, and then places it back on the counter. When it's apparent that she's not going to drink anymore the S.H.I.E.L.D agent tips back the rest. When he finishes he shakes, like a dog. "Ugh."

"Bartok, you're drinking me out of house and home. Actually, Thor was doing that already—"

"It's Barton."

"Huh?" Tony staggers to the counter, not paying much attention. The manila envelope is sitting there, and he reaches for it as he swings onto a bar stool. Thor leans towards him.

"My friend," the blonde man pauses, then: "I have a desire to sort out the puzzle that is now surrounding us, but I, more than most, know not to act rashly. If my brother really is alive, I will find him—with or without the help of this organization."

Tony fingers the clasp on the envelope.

"For what it's worth, S.H.I.E.L.D isn't completely corrupt," Bartok throws in his two cents, looking at the bottom of his glass. Tony snorts, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, whatever." He rips open the envelope and reaches for the piece of paper inside. "Fury's got a secret agenda, and don't tell me otherwise, Barter."

"Barton."

"Bless you."

"Stark, the reports couldn't prepare me for you."

"Thanks." With that he pulls the paper from the folder and sets it carefully on the counter. After a moment's pause he rubs vigorously at his eyes. Then: "Shit."

"What?" It's the first time Jane's spoken. Tony looks up at her with a tight smile.

"Looks like I'm going to Calcutta."


	6. Chapter 6

**a/n:** i'm...not...dead?

* * *

If he sits on the bleachers and closes his eyes it's almost like it's 1943 again. The radio in the corner is crooning, Ella's voice soft and oddly comforting through lull of white static. Outside cars honk, but they aren't sleek and fast and strange through three walls and several windows.

They're just cars.

The radio is just a radio.

The year is just 1943 and if he steps outside Peggy'll be waiting for him, looking like a dame from some noir flick with her no-nonsense look and killer figure in that red dress, but then she smiles—

And he opens his eyes.

The radio in the corner is shiny, chrome-covered, and very obviously plastic, painted a gaudy white. The car horns sound more aggressive. The wall in front of him is plastered with pictures of guys standing smiling in front of fighter planes, dressed to the nines in their army uniforms, looking so proud—

He wonders how many of them survived.

After a long moment he picks himself up, stepping across the row of punching bags laid out across the floor like body bags, stopping in front the one hanging from a hook in the ceiling, twisting sideways in an invisible wind. He flexes his knuckles through layers of heavy bandages, and then punches.

The thing gives easily beneath him, but because of his skin and the bandages and just _what he is_ he can barely feel it, so he throws a left immediately after, and then a right again, and in between each successive punch the faces of the ghosts around him leer down, accusing him of surviving while they did not. Punch, and he's on the back of a motorbike hurtling through the forest, punch, and Bucky is still there, guarding his back, punch and Peggy is asking for a dance, punch and the impact is enough to knock him clear backwards across the cabin, punch and he wakes up, cold, cold, cold—

The bag splits. It flies across the room, collides with the far wall, and slides to the floor, taking several pictures with it. He's barely panting.

He reaches for another.

"Trouble sleeping?"

He looks towards the entrance and is hardly surprised to find Director Fury there, hands clasped behind him, because the man's unofficial job title should read: babysitter to the mentally unbalanced. The man looks tired, his bulk not so big as normal as he steps into the gym.

Steve Rogers turns back to the punching bag before him and gives a solid right hook. "I've been asleep for seventy years. I think I've had enough rest."

If his voice is too bitter Director Fury does not comment. Steve waits for him to say what he's there for, what he wants, something, anything, but when, after several more vicious attacks on the sandbag before him, Fury still hasn't opened his mouth, he gives up and turns around, heading towards his open duffle by the bleachers, and begins to unwind the bandages around his knuckles. He's done with ghosts for the day. His mouth is dry as he says, "When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost."

Seventy pairs of eyes stare down at him, accusing, like the saints on the outside of his church back home.

"We've made some mistakes along the way. Some, very recently."

Steve thinks Fury sounds a bit strange, words clipped and forced, but doesn't ask—it's not his place—and instead offers, "Are you here with a mission, sir?"

"I am."

"Trying to get me back in the world?" The world of fast cars and iron suits and women who offer themselves up for easy money on the side of the road—

"Trying to save it." Fury pulls his clasped hands from behind his back. In one he's holding a manila file, strangely mundane and normal. As Steve takes the proffered item he asks, "You feeling okay, sir?"

"Headache," Fury responds sharply, rubbing at one temple with an annoyed frown and motioning with one hand for him to open the file.

Steve does, reluctantly, and the paper falls back to one side to reveal a bright-color picture of a blue cube, innocuous against a black background. Steve's stomach drops. He throws the file onto the bleachers with a little too much force and begins to unwind the bandages from around his other hand. "HYDRA's secret weapon."

So after all of that. After _all of that_—

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. He thought what we think: the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

Steve wants to point out that it would cost much more than the world has to offer. Instead: "Who took it from you?"

"He's called Loki," Fury pauses, sounding oddly proud. He shakes his head, once, before continuing, "He's…not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on, if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

Steve thinks about the world of fast cars and iron suits and women who offer themselves up for easy money on the side of the road. He thinks of flat screen boxes that they call televisions now, beautiful bright color blossoming over the airwaves. He thinks of this thing called the internet and high-speed trains and jets that can travel the speed of sound. He thinks about all of this and says, "At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me."

Fury cocks a sharp grin; it looks out of place on his face. "Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing packet waiting for you at your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

Fury sounds an awful lot like he's fishing for information, a thought that would get Steve court martialed on a different time and day as he shoves the bandages into his duffle, the file following, and zips it closed. He steps back and reaches down for one of the sand-body-bags lying on the floor, hoisting it over his shoulder. It weighs about as much as sack of groceries.

He doesn't look at Fury as he heads out, because somewhere in the back of his mind all he's thinking about is that he couldn't have stopped _every damn thing _that had to do with the Cube, could he? No. His sacrifice just wasn't big enough, was it, and—

"You should have left it in the water."

* * *

The girl leads him to a house. Well, more of a shack, really, he thinks, as her bare feet slap across the hard dirt and she races inside. He sends the usual, cursory glance sideways, left, right, taking in his surroundings before he commits—

It's the edge of the city, and it's almost deserted, excepting that military car that drove by earlier, and a few shepherds to his left. He pushes past a hanging drape and finds himself inside a poorly furnished home, bespeaking the poverty so prevalent in this part of the world. No wonder the girl's father was sick.

Speaking of the girl—

She springs out the far window, money in hand, and disappears into the night.

He stands rather awkwardly, watching her retreating form, one hand clenched around the strap of his messenger bag, the other fisted and pounding an empty rhythm on his leg. After a long moment he says, "Should've got paid up front, Banner."

"Rule number one, big guy—never trust a woman. Even a mini one."

Bruce whips around towards the voice, and his mouth drops open an inch or two, because Tony _fucking_ Stark was standing in front of him, looking entirely out of place in the heat of the Calcutta night in his suit and tie (probably Garsace or Vermani or whatever the hell the companies were calling themselves these days). Tony continues, "You know, for a guy who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked one helluva place to settle. Calcutta? Really? Your brains, man? You could have been set up in Beverly Hills with a nice Ferrari, if you know what I mean."

He doesn't. "Avoiding stress isn't the secret." He once watched Tony Stark deliver a lecture on reverse engineering repulsor technology while completely and utterly wasted. Talking to him in person where he seems to be completely and utterly sober—

Well. This was strange.

And certainly not good, given Stark's record as the _Iron Man,_ with ties to his least favorite government organization.

Something hot and angry coils in the pit of his stomach.

"Then what is it? Yoga?"

Bruce ignores the jab. He looks at the broken wood beneath him, the frayed blankets, the flickering halogen light. He steps behind a cradle, decaying, moth-eaten sheets almost gone, and pushes it once. "You brought me to the edge of the city. Smart. I, uh... assume the whole place is surrounded?"

"Just you and me, big guy. And well, I know we just met each other, and we're moving kind of fast, but I'm just going to be completely honest here and say I brought my suit in case you know, you—well." Tony makes an exaggerated motion with his arms and face, a cross between a roar and a grimace, and then breaks into an easy grin. Bruce laughs, but not very convincingly.

"Yeah. In case I." He raises his eyebrows, repeating the gesture. He sighs, stops pushing at the cradle, and takes off his glasses to rub them on the collar of his shirt, getting them dirtier in the process. "Why are you here, Mr. Stark?"

"So you _do_ know me! That's good, man. I thought I was gonna have to give my resume. You know, I'm a big fan of your work, too, by the by—" Did Bruce ever say he was a fan? "—the way you hulk-out and turn into an enormous green rage monster and stuff."

"Which I will do, if you don't get to the point," Bruce says mildly. Stark has the gall to only look slightly perturbed.

"Well, okay, I've debugged the place, so—_officially_ I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Of course." Bruce settles the glasses back on his nose. "How did they find me?"

"Hell if I know. Well, I do actually, but that's not—look, _unofficially_ I'm here to tell you I trust Fury about as much as I trust Natasha Romanoff. Which, because you won't get that reference, is not a lot."

"So why are you here on his behalf?"

"Because, well, this shit is pretty big, and I don't trust Fury to, uh, deal with it _his_ way—he'll fuck it up, I mean—so I'm going to deal with it _my_ way. From the inside, of course."

"So what are you asking?"

"He wants you to come in, and, quite frankly, I've read the files—we need you, bud."

"What if I said no?"

"Then you say no."

This startles him. "What?"

"Yeah, I'll deal with Fury for you. Look, I'm not marching to the beat of Fury's drum, and if you don't want to either that's fine, I'm not gonna stop you—but just look at this." Stark pulls a sleek, clear phone from the inside of his suit jacket. A few clicks, and the man has a projection of a small, strangely-glowing cube floating in the air between them. Bruce cocks his head, now intensely confused. Stark looks at him expectantly. When Bruce says nothing after few more seconds Tony says, incredulously, "We're facing a potential global catastrophe."

"Well _those_ I actively try to avoid," Banner says dryly. "What, then, because of that?"

"Um, yeah, because of this." Stark shakes his hand and the cube bounces along in midair. "It's the Tesseract, and according to Fury's files it—hold on," Stark pulls the phone close to his face and reads by the eerie blue glow, "has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

"What do you want me to do then, _swallow_ it?"

"Ha, you're funny, did you—ha! No, man. It omits a gamma signature that's too weak for S.H.I.E.L.D to trace. They're out of their leg, as always. And there is no one on planet E-A-R-T-H that knows gamma radiation like Y-O-U. No offense."

"None taken," Bruce sighs, gripping his messenger bag with more force. Stark doesn't notice his discomfort, simply continues to prattle away.

"So, I mean, I know that Fury wants to stop this 'Loki' or whatever-the-hell larper name the kid's got for himself, but there's something _off_ about Fury, and no, Pepper's wrong, I don't think that just because he rejected me _at first_ for the Initiative—I mean there's something seriously fucked up in the dude's head, and personally, I want to live in a nice world, so we should probably get this under control—"

"So Fury isn't after the monster?" Bruce asks suddenly. The silence that falls is complete and absolute and Tony is giving him a look so close to pity that it almost makes him angrier than the entire situation he's currently faced with.

"Look, I'm going to be honest with you." Stark rubs a hand down his face. "I don't know." There's a beat, and Bruce itches to slam his hands against the table, but then Stark goes on, "But you've got Iron Man on your side, and really, that's like having three nukes and a spaceship, so I think you're good."

Bruce watches, mesmerized, as the holographic cube floats in mid-air. Around him is the humid smell of Calcutta night, something he's gotten used to over the last few years, a place so full of stress and anger and poverty and—

And life. Life, too.

If he had a chance to save that, shouldn't he?

"Alright. Count me in."

"Hulk-tastic." Tony's grin is sharp and cat-like and Bruce feels like he's just sold his soul to the devil.

Great.

* * *

"You know what the best place on earth is? Budapest. Budapest is fucking _great_."

"It's like he didn't even know me. What an asshole. What a complete—"

"Really great and—"

"Drinks!" Thor roars, and suddenly Clint's glass of whatever-liquor-was-still-left-in-Tony-Stark's-cabinet is overflowing onto the countertop of the bar for like, the third time or something, and Thor downs his whole thing in one gulp, and Jane uses her hands like funny little barricades in front of her and says, very deliberately and very suddenly, "Thor came to Earth."

Clint side-eyes the lumbering blonde, who, after devouring another flattened Pop Tart, proceeds to rummage for more alcohol. "Yeah. I got that."

"Ok, well, he did. But _he_ didn't." Jane frowns. Clint thinks she might be a little bit drunk. He thinks he might be a little bit drunk. Stark's last words to them before he hopped on a private jet to Calcutta had been, "Don't burn the house down, children."

He had said not _one thing_ about the alcohol. Not _one thing_—

"But then Thor couldn't get back to his own world, because the Bi—the Bi—"

"Bifrost," Thor supplies helpfully, and the man does not seem the least bit buzzed, how _unfair_—

"Yeah, that—it broke. So he couldn't get back."

"Wait. Why—why did—I like this drink." If Nat were here she would hit him upside the head, but oh, right.

She's not.

"Loki's a bastard," Jane says abruptly, and Clint cheers, "Here, here!"

Thor belches his approval.

"I am so wasted." Clint smiles. "I am—are you wasted?"

He drinks to forget what's happening and drinks to forget Natasha and drinks because hey, it's free—

He passes out, falling backwards and smashing his head, and the last thing he hears is the boom of Thor's laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

**a/n: **hey folks! thanks so much for keeping with me on this story. it's hard to get updates out with school, and i'll try my hardest, but no guarantees. thank you all so much for your lovely reviews, they keep me going!

in the meantime, please read and review :)

* * *

"Really, Clint?"

"What—what's with that tone? I know that tone, that's your 'holier-than-thou' tone—"

"No, it's my 'you're-a-giant-_idiot_' tone."

They are backed up behind a barricade of twisted metal. A couple of Honda Civics, maybe, if he knows his cars—it's hard to tell when they're all mashed up like that, though; they could actually be two Maseratis for all he can see of the make and brand. Either way, the headlights are flashing and a strangled sort of sound, which he takes for the car alarm, is attempting to make an impact through the screaming, shouting, bullet-ripped air around them. He presses his shoulder against cold steel and peers out. "What do you mean I'm a giant idiot?"

"I mean the world is going to shit, and you're drunk."

"I am _not_ drunk!" His world tips sideways around the edges, and he blinks, once. "Are we in Budapest?"

"Shoot first, questions later."

Clint, sighing, does as he's told, reaching behind him for the familiar feel of fletch against his fingers—and grapples at nothing but air. In a panic he slings his quiver around to his front and then, stomach dropping, practically shouts, "I'm all out!"

He whips his head sideways as several bullets _ping_ against metal. "I'm all out Nat, what do I—"

But she's not there anymore, and he's not sure that she ever was. He feels his chest contracting and his mind freezes as, over the toppled bus he'd been using to cover his back, a man with black hair and green, green eyes appears, lithe and slim, standing amid the hellfire with a grin on his face that could raise the dead; Clint watches as he opens his mouth—

* * *

_"Wake up, Borgnine."_

* * *

He comes to slowly, world heavy and black behind his sticky eyelids, the dream still reverberating across his skull. He's lying on something cold, arm bent awkwardly beneath his head. His mouth tastes of bile and rotten cheese.

"I said, good morning, star shine, and who the _fuck_ gave you permission to drink _all _of my _goddamn _alcohol?"

Clint finally pulls open his eyes and finds his nose several inches away from cold black granite or concrete or some other equally fancy material his mind can't find a name for at the moment. He tries to sit up but the world tips violently, so he falls back into darkness, tracking Stark's angry footsteps as they cross the penthouse to the bar. There is the clank and clatter of glass on glass.

"You didn't even leave the scotch. That was like, twenty year old scotch, man—"

"Master Stark! Good morning!"

"Jesus! Thor, put some pants on!" Pause. "And where's Jane? God, Bach, if you pushed her out the window—"

"I'm right here." Jane sounds _very _hung over. "I was just—Thor!" Her voice goes into a strangled sort of screech.

"Good morning, Jane Foster!"

"Yeah, um, hi—"

"Buddy, big hint: if it's before nine o'clock we don't want the—well. You get the picture."

Clint bites the proverbial bullet (poor choice of words) and sits up, world blurring as he blinks open his eyes: Stark is shaking out the last of every bottle that wasn't smashed or thrown outside into a chipped glass; Jane is, eyes covered, staggering to the Pop Tart stained couch; and Thor, scratching his beard, is in a pair of what he presumes are Stark's boxers, which are three sizes too small and leave little to the imagination. "Are those hearts?" He manages, slowly, looking incredulously.

"Actually little Einstein heads—joke gift from Pepper. Or maybe actual gift. I couldn't tell." Stark had managed to get an impressive half-glass of the remaining booze; he tips it back easily. "_Anyway_. Leave the kids for one night and they throw a party. You are all, by the way, grounded."

"Yes, Dad," Jane groans from the couch, curling up into a little ball. Clint would find this all immensely amusing if he didn't feel like vomiting into the nearest trashcan. Thor wanders idly over to the mini-fridge. "I do not know what you means, friends! We drank. We made our ancestors proud. We can ask no more than that."

"I would _kill_ for an Asgardian metabolic system," Jane grumbles, pushing her hair away from her face. Clint agrees with a grunt, trying to use the legs of the nearest stool to push himself into a standing position. Thor, sliding sideways with two bagels and another Pop Tart in his mouth (how can he _eat_ after last night?), easily picks him up with one meaty hand across his upper arm and rights him against the bar.

"Thanks," Clint tries, but it comes out more like, "Thalsknsss."

"My mission went great, if anyone cares. Talked to the Big Guy. He's on board."

"Who is this?"

"How 'bout I tell you _after_ you puts some pants on, bud. Hey, and Bohr? I know it's like, super early and shit, but are you going to pick up your phone anytime soon?"

Clint blinks lazily. There is a faint ring he's noticing, or perhaps he _has_ been noticing it and is only now really paying attention. Three sharp trills, then silence, then three sharp trills—he looks up at Stark. "That's—that's _my _phone?"

"You got it, Einstein. I'd pick it up if I were you."

Clint fumbles in his pocket, fingers feeling like they belong to somebody else as he pulls forth his ringing cell and smashes the accept button. He holds it slowly and several inches away from his ear. "Hello?" It feels like it takes him too long to say.

"Agent Barton. Where have you been? I've been trying for the last hour."

"Agent Sitwell. Oh—" he begins and finishes: "Ohut. Out. I've been out. Following a—led. Lead. Lead on things."

Stark snorts loudly, patting him on the back as he walks out from behind the bar with a bottle of red Gatorade, so hard he nearly tips over. "Good work, Bartok. They won't suspect a thing," Stark finishes at a whisper, before continuing, louder and to Jane: "Hey, babe, hangover miracle cure right here—"

"_Go away_," Jane hisses.

"We need you at 1100 hours to rendezvous at the Helicarrier."

"Right."

"And Barton?"

"Yes?"

"We couldn't find record of any checkpoint scheduled for one Jane Foster. Is she still in your care?"

Shit. Shit, fuck, shit, fuck—"Uh, yeah, you know in all the—the confusion I must've—she's here, with me. I'll bring her."

"She could be useful with her…ties to the invader."

He blinks at this, and manages a fairly coherent: "She's one of the world's top scientists, Jasper, not an overgrown piece of meat to attract alien invasions. Invaders." Shit, he almost had it.

"I was only saying—"

"Barton, over and out."

He slams his phone into the bar so hard it breaks into two pieces, sending plastic into his palm and gouging the granite surface. He rubs his hand down his face, trying to make his eyes feel less like they belonged to a robot and more like they belonged to a human. He says, then, loudly enough for the room to hear, "They want us at the Helicarrier."

"Got my orders before you, Bartok," Stark says, straightening with a click of his tongue.

He wants to _die_.

"Thor, bud, you know the plan?"

"Aye, my friend, though I do not agree with it."

"What plan?" Clint asks, hobbling away from the bar.

"None of your beeswax, Barrymore. Now, if you barf on my private jet I will personally make sure you get placed on the 'Do Not Fly' list. I don't care if you're a government agent or the Queen of Fucking Sheba. Up and at 'em, Foster, time to catch your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," Jane growls, sliding to her feet, "and I'm going to break his nose."

"We're just one big happy family, aren't we?" Clint pulls out his sunglasses from his back pocket and slides them on, stumbling towards the elevator. "This is going to be _great_."

* * *

The black sky is painted through with blue stars and purple nebulas, bathing the barren, gray rock in a strange half-light that he wanders silently. He can feel his mind stretched over a distance so great he could not calculate it if he had a million lifetimes to do so. His spear, anchoring him to this realm, grows heavy in his hand as a voice like gravel speaks.

"The Chitauri grow restless."

He cracks his neck sideways, pulling the full of his armor out of the nether as he turns to face the Other, teeth bloody and gleaming in the half-light. Blue eats at the edges of his thoughts, fights his own liquid white-green, but he feels better with the modicum of safety his helm and breastplate and bracers afford him. "Let them gird themselves. I will lead them into glorious battle."

The Other laughs, a thousand knives scraping against the inside of his skull, and he almost cracks. "Battle? Against the meager might of Earth?"

Loki readjusts his grip on the spear, settles it in the dusty earth of the rock and leans. "Glorious, not lengthy." As he stares at the gray dirt he finds he is reminded of sand, the yellow sand of a place called New Mexico. Clarity bursts through the blue-haze clouding his thoughts and he snaps, "If your force is as formidable as you claim."

The Other hisses, "You question us? You question _him_? He, who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out?"

The blessed clarity is still there, and he frowns openly. "Do not think you can fool the Prince of Lies." He voice is tight. "I was not cast out. I fell."

"You were but a stray, taken in by a father who cared nothing for you and overshadowed, always, by your brother."

Loki feels, then, the fog returning, like manacles around his mind. The Other continues:

"We look beyond the Earth, to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil."

Before he is gone, lost completely, he leans forward, brushing the tip of his spear against the Other's face. "But you don't have the Tesseract yet." The creature tightens, lips baring in a snarl over twisted teeth. "I do not threaten. But until I have Earth firmly in my grasp, until you have sworn oaths to leave it to my command, until then—you are but words. And I do not lose in wars of words."

The Other slips out of reach, slow, measured steps echoing across the dead, barren planet. Loki straightens, watching out of the corner of his eye, and the haze settles again, thick, a mire in his thoughts, forcing each to fight its way to the surface. He remembers, vaguely, falling. He remembers, vaguely, pain and torture. He remembers, but only just.

"You will have the Earth, Asgardian, as you will command our force. But know that if you fail—if the Tesseract is kept from us—there will be no realm, no barren moon, no _crevice_ where _he_ cannot find you." He feels the Other at his back, long, snake-like fingers inching towards the side of his head, the barest, lightest of touches against his temple. "You think you know pain? He will make you long for something sweet as pain."

The Other presses, and his world explodes into fire, atom-ripping, molecule-bursting, blood-boiling, skin-flaming fire that does not ease until his eyes fly open.

He is in a tunnel. Water drips down the sides of brown, decaying bricks, and fly-like humans garbed in rudimentary armor with rudimentary weapons bustle about. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, for the thin trill of his white-green magic to stop singing in his head, attempting to knit bones that are not broken.

He stands.

The presence is less, here, but still crouching around the edges of his thoughts, watching, testing his mettle. He wants to cage it with his magic, but that would garner nothing but trouble. Instead he blinks calmly, watching the humans scurry like ants. Amid the apparent chaos, Selvig is fiddling with pieces for his portal.

He says, to distract himself, "And how goes the work, Dr. Selvig?"

"It's there, it's—you know," the doctor looks at him with awe in his eyes, a smile playing around his lips, "the Tesseract is showing me so much. It's more than just knowledge, it's—it's truth."

(_—do not think it is not truth it is truth _he_ will find you if you think it is not truth if _he_ senses rebellion _he_ will crush the Earth between _his_ boot heel and leave it bleeding in space and leave her dead do not think do not—_)

"I know," Loki smiles grimly. He asks, without turning, "And what did it show you, Agent Romanoff?"

Natasha walks gracefully out from behind him, and he watchers her cat-like grace out of the corner of his eye as she settles next to the doctor. She smiles prettily at him. "My next target."

"What do you need?"

Natasha crosses her arms. "A distraction." Her grin turns wolfish, deadly. "And an eyeball."

* * *

"Is there a reason you're wearing sunglasses indoors, Agent?"

"No, sir."

Fury grunts. Jane would look sympathetically at Clint if she could manage, but as it is, her throbbing head is getting in the way of her thinking clearly. Only Tony looks completely at ease—he's next to her, lounging in one of the padded chairs around the briefing table, feet up and on the glass. He's examining his nails as Fury turns to them both.

"I didn't appreciate your little disappearing act, Ms. Foster."

"Contrary to popular belief, Fury, _you don't own me_."

"She's right on that front," Tony adds, not looking up.

"I, uh, don't think this is a great environment for me to be in. Airborne pressurized metal container?"

Jane whips around at the sound of the new voice, which is a mistake. She grimaces, pushing at the crick in her neck and getting shakily to her feet. In front of her is a man who could, in all theory, be living in a shack several miles away from any sort of civilization—unkempt, loose pants, oversized shirt, bags under his eyes that are only magnified by his glasses—but she would know him anywhere.

She holds out her hand, smiling. "Dr. Banner, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"And you, Ms. Foster. Your theory on intergalactic travel was brilliant."

She laughs, finds that once she starts she can't stop, and is tugged back into her seat by Tony as he, himself, stands. "Hulkster, great of you to show." He smiles, and there is something genuine about it, even as Jane twitches at the nickname and all the members of S.H.I.E.L.D currently scattered about the deck pause. Maria Hill gives a snort, rolling her eyes.

"Well, I had nothing better to do." Dr. Banner returns the smile uncomfortably. Fury breaks the silence that follows, stepping forward with an outstretched hand.

"Doctor, thank you for coming."

"Thanks for—yeah. So, uh, how long am I staying?"

Jane watches Banner twist his fingers uncomfortably before turning her gaze to Clint, who is hunkered down in front of a computer, looking at the monitor as the database scans security footage for one Natasha Romanoff.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

"Where are you with that, by the way?" Tony breaks in, settling back in his seat and kicking his boots on the table.

Hill answers, raising her lip in disgust at Tony's behavior in a way that makes Jane laugh even more, until Clint—finished with the computer—settles himself in the empty seat next to her and delivers a slap to her arm. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

"Still not going to find them in time," Tony sing-songs.

"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Bruce asks, rolling up his sleeves.

"How many are there?" Fury claps his hands behind him.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

Jane giggles again. "That was amazing."

"Uh, thanks, I—" Banner is cut off by Hill.

"Come on, Doctor. I'll show you to the lab."

Next to her Clint rubs his eyes beneath his sunglasses and snickers under his breath, " 'That was amazing!' You are _such _a science nerd."

She sticks her tongue out, watching Banner's back as it disappears into the bowels of the Helicarrier.

"News flash, Captain Brainiac—the best people are." Tony grins.

Jane nods her agreement emphatically, is leaning back in her chair smiling and finally (thank God) beginning to regain her appetite, wondering where the galley or mess is on this thing, when a shrill beep levels off somewhere on the deck below. Fury immediately whirls toward the noise; Clint, too, is on his feet, and she follows, shaky enough still that she reaches for his elbow. Only Tony remains seated, fiddling with his phone with a frown.

"What is it?" She asks, following Clint down to the computer monitor.

Fury ignores her.

"What is it?" Clint asks, and Fury answers question for question: "Facial recognition?"

Dick.

"Seventy-percent match for Loki," an agent says, hunkered over the screen, where a blurry figure stands outside of a white-marble building. "Seventy-five percent. Eighty."

Her stomach does a tight little flip, knots up, then stops moving altogether.

"That's it, sir. Eighty percent match."

"That's not good enough," Fury growls, already turning away, except Jane says, very, very clearly, "It's him."

The room quiets. Even now the image is depixelating, revealing a lithe form and black hair and maybe her imagination but a hint of green, green eyes—"It's him."

"I want a strike team, now—Barton, suit up. Stark, get your gear on, dammit, and get off your phone. I want a line on Rogers and—"

"I'm going."

"I'm afraid not, Ms. Foster." Fury turns to look at her coldly, one dark eye glinting. "It's dangerous."

"Since when did you care about my safety, Fury?"

"Since your inexperience in combat could jeopardize other lives on the field. You aren't trained for this. You stay here. Help Banner in the lab. We _need_ to find the Tesseract."

Jane opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off.

"That's an _order_."

She takes one final look at the image on screen, the face clearly recognizable now, before storming up the stairs and away, wishing desperately that she could give Fury a good one, right in the face, and maybe knock him out of whatever world he was currently inhabiting.

* * *

Agent Phil Coulson tries to draw on the steady thrum of the Quinjet as some sort of calming influence—background noise, maybe, like the ocean, or the rain—but when he's standing in front of Steve Rogers aka Captain America aka _Captain America_—

Well.

He stares, tells himself he should really, by his age and job title, be much more professional than this, and blinks quickly away to glance out the front cockpit as Rogers looks up from the holopad he's holding like a time bomb. On it, the Hulk is ripping through several armored tanks. Outside the sky is bright.

"So this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?"

"A—" his voice squeaks, and he adjusts his tie, starting over. "A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

As Coulson watches, Rogers turns back to the screen; there is something like guilt playing around the younger man's eyes. "Didn't really go his way, did it?"

"Not so much. When he's got that thing, though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking." Coulson raises his eyebrows, cocking half-a-smile, but Rogers just looks confused. He coughs, uncomfortable again with the fact that he didn't remember Steve had been on ice for what, seventy years, and great, Coulson, just great, you brought it up, you—"He's like a really smart person." To cover up his gaffe he continues quickly: "I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I was there while you were sleeping. I mean, I was present, while you were unconscious from the ice. I mean—you know, it's really, it's just a huge honor to have you on board."

Steve gives him a small smile. "Well, I hope I'm the man for the job."

"Oh, you are. Absolutely. Uh…we've made some slight modifications to the uniform." He adds, proudly, "I've had a little design input."

(And by little he means he designed the whole thing, but that might come off as a little strong.)

"The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little…old-fashioned?"

"With everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light—people might just need a little old-fashioned." Coulson adjusts his tie once more, mind wandering to the Captain America Trading Card Set he had in his locker, and if he could just get them _signed_—

"Sir? Fury's on the line."

Coulson looks to the cockpit. "Well, patch him through."

"Coulson." Fury's voice, sounding tired and strained, spreads over the intercom. "Is Rogers with you?"

"Yes, sir." Coulson looks across at Steve, who is examining the air with the look of someone who has just seen a ghost. Or maybe heard the voice of God. Or both. He bends down in a whisper, "It's a wireless voice thing."

Steve nods, but it's more of a I'll-buy-whatever-you-say nod than a sure-I-get-it nod. Coulson straightens as Fury continues, "We have Loki's location. We're re-routing you now. Stuttgart, Germany. You better suit up."

"Yes, sir," he and Rogers reply in unison. There is a crackle of static and then silence.

"Well," he says, looking at Steve with what he hopes is an encouraging smile, "that was unexpected."

Steve sighs, tossing the holopad onto the seat next to him, where it hits with a sound like shattering glass. "Why did it have to be Germany."

It isn't a question.


End file.
